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  1. #21
    Quote Originally Posted by jimsumner View Post
    The possibility of FTL travel is the key. In the absence of faster-than-light travel the only way interstellar travel makes sense is for a species that has an exceptionally long life span and the capability of building ships and artificial environments that last a really, really long time.
    Not necessarily, because of relativity and time dilation. A spaceship that travels extremely fast, at almost but not quite the speed of light, could make it to other stars in the galaxy in thousands of years from our perspective, but in only decades from the perspective of a creature on board the spaceship. It sounds wacky, but note that time dilation and relativity have already been proven to be Real Things using very precise measurements.

    But, this is all getting ahead of ourselves. The next step is to look for life in our Solar System. And I think it's totally realistic that we find strong evidence of microbial life on Mars, Venus, Europa, or Enceladus within our lifetimes.

  2. #22
    Join Date
    Dec 2011
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    Albemarle, North Carolina
    "I’m very curious about where most people stand on UFO/ET. So, my questions would be:"
    1. Do you believe UFOs have visited earth?No Why?Fermi Paradox and faster than speed of light travel would dismantle any sentient being
    2. Do you believe extraterrestrials have visited earth? Why? No, the evidence is lacking among other things
    3. If you believe extraterrestrials have visited earth, do you actively search for information?
    4. If you don’t believe extraterrestrials have visited earth, are you open to believing it? Who isn't open to evidence?
    Last edited by JNort; 09-21-2020 at 12:41 PM.
    "The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge" -Stephen Hawking

  3. #23
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    Sep 2007
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    Undisclosed
    Quote Originally Posted by brevity View Post
    As I get older, I become more convinced that there is no intelligent life in the universe. Not even on Earth.

    Well, maybe dolphins.
    "So long, and thanks for all the fish."

  4. #24
    Join Date
    Nov 2007
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    Vermont
    Not sure I want to get into the weeds on this one, but when my wife was growing up at the satellite tracking station in Cadiz Spain, frequent dinner guests were Carl Sagan and J. Allen Hynek, he of Project Blue Book fame (originally hired by the Air Force to debunk UFO stories, he later came to have a lot more respect for UFO reports from military pilots...you can Google him up)...there was a recent TV series based on his experiences...pretty fascinating guy.

  5. #25
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Cincinnati, Ohio
    My thinking on this is, "Yes, they're out there, and no, we're not going to see them".

    Life has restarted on earth about half a dozen times after some of the planet's extreme events. Since it has bounced back here under various different conditions, it just doesn't seem reasonable that it wouldn't happen elsewhere given the innumerable other locations where it could happen.

    Then assuming they are out there in great numbers, it would seem likely that some of them are hundreds of thousands if not millions of years further along in their evolution than us. And many others might be equally far behind us. But if intragalactic - or intergalactic travel were feasible, because of some technology we haven't discovered yet, then some and possibly many of those further advanced civilizations should have stopped by to say hello by now. I can't buy that they would make the enormous investment required to take a voyage like that, and then just drive by and go home.

    So I think that unless the luck of the draw puts multiple life sustaining planets in close enough proximity - there's no way we get to see each other.

  6. #26
    Quote Originally Posted by jimsumner View Post
    I believe it was Arthur C. Clarke who said something along the lines of "we are either alone in the universe or we aren't. Either possibility is terrifying."

    The possibility of FTL travel is the key. In the absence of faster-than-light travel the only way interstellar travel makes sense is for a species that has an exceptionally long life span and the capability of building ships and artificial environments that last a really, really long time.

    And lots of patience.

    Living thousands of years versus faster-than-light travel. Way above my pay grade. Anyone with a doctorate in physics? Or life sciences?

    Most importantly, is it too late for these aliens to register for the 2020 elections?
    When you look at the state of the world in 100 year segments, think of the advancements from the 1920's through today. How about from the 1820s through today? Or the 1720s until today? Now think of what it might be like in 100 years? or even just 50? The advancement of applied science is advancing.

    There is no reason to think we won't be able to make interstellar travel possible in the next 200-300 years. The only question is if we don't get stupid and end the species first.

  7. #27
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
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    Asheville
    Quote Originally Posted by whereinthehellami View Post
    I have always wanted to believe in Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) and extraterrestrials (ET) but was a healthy skeptic. “Show me the evidence” was my mantra. I have two science degrees, a BS in Biology and a MS in Geography (GIS).

    After the release (April 27, 2020) of the USS Nimitz UFO sightings in 2004 and the USS Roosevelt UFO sightings in 2015 I started looking into the UFO phenomenon. I have gone down the rabbit hole so to speak and have been blown away by some of the cases I was not aware of.

    The question for me, is no longer have UFOs visited earth, as there can be little doubt that they have visited but instead why is there not more interest and more questions? For what is more interesting than the reality of earth being visited by aliens and UFO?

    I’m very curious about where most people stand on UFO/ET. So, my questions would be:
    1. Do you believe UFOs have visited earth? Why?
    2. Do you believe extraterrestrials have visited earth? Why?
    3. If you believe extraterrestrials have visited earth, do you actively search for information?
    4. If you don’t believe extraterrestrials have visited earth, are you open to believing it?

    For those that don’t believe UFO/ETs have visited earth, I propose to present 10 of the most believable cases and see what your thoughts are on whether your mind has been changed or not.

    I will follow this post with one case at a time.
    I think you left off #5: Have you ever experienced an anal probe (from an extraterrestrial being)?

    ricks

  8. #28
    Quote Originally Posted by Ggallagher View Post
    My thinking on this is, "Yes, they're out there, and no, we're not going to see them".

    Life has restarted on earth about half a dozen times after some of the planet's extreme events. Since it has bounced back here under various different conditions, it just doesn't seem reasonable that it wouldn't happen elsewhere given the innumerable other locations where it could happen.

    Then assuming they are out there in great numbers, it would seem likely that some of them are hundreds of thousands if not millions of years further along in their evolution than us. And many others might be equally far behind us. But if intragalactic - or intergalactic travel were feasible, because of some technology we haven't discovered yet, then some and possibly many of those further advanced civilizations should have stopped by to say hello by now. I can't buy that they would make the enormous investment required to take a voyage like that, and then just drive by and go home.

    So I think that unless the luck of the draw puts multiple life sustaining planets in close enough proximity - there's no way we get to see each other.
    Another theory I heard about this is that species might only be "noisy" for a very short period of time. The period of time where humanity has BLASTED electronic broadcasts into space is going to be microscopic on a galactic scale. Already we are moving everything to ground based fiber and/or narrow beam satellite. I imagine on a global scale the amount of detectable electronic broadcasts leaving earth have dropped significantly since the 1940s and 50s and will only drop further. This will make us harder to find and unless you are looking at the right place for the 50-100 years a species is making noise, you won't find them.

  9. #29
    Join Date
    Nov 2007
    Location
    Vermont
    Like Stephen Hawking said, we ought not be too hopeful of having space dudes visit as they might wish to consume us like cocktail shrimp. (I paraphrase)...

  10. #30
    Join Date
    Mar 2007
    Location
    Wherever the wind blows and the leaves dance.
    Quote Originally Posted by duke79 View Post
    ... And there are also quite a few people who claim that they have been abducted by aliens (there was a famous and controversial book written by a psychiatrist and professor at Harvard Medical School, who went around the United States, interviewing these "alien abductees", and he even put many of them under hypnosis. He found many of their stories to be quite similar and legitimate and he could not come up with a good explanation for their shared experiences).
    I think you are talking about Dr. Mack and he was very well respected Harvard psychiatrist and professor until he got interested in abductions.

    Quote Originally Posted by duke79 View Post
    Some people have speculated that perhaps the "UFO's" are really "manned" by highly sophisticated robots (so not really a "living species") that could survive a very long time travel. Also there is the possibility (which I mentioned above) that the universe is somehow set up differently that what we currently believe. See link below.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wormhole
    There are some really interesting theories out there. A lot of them are varying degrees of fringe thinking.

    Quote Originally Posted by Wander View Post
    Not necessarily, because of relativity and time dilation. A spaceship that travels extremely fast, at almost but not quite the speed of light, could make it to other stars in the galaxy in thousands of years from our perspective, but in only decades from the perspective of a creature on board the spaceship. It sounds wacky, but note that time dilation and relativity have already been proven to be Real Things using very precise measurements.

    But, this is all getting ahead of ourselves. The next step is to look for life in our Solar System. And I think it's totally realistic that we find strong evidence of microbial life on Mars, Venus, Europa, or Enceladus within our lifetimes.
    I think the first step is to say that there is a lot out there that we don't understand. Quantum physics and entanglement theory seem on the verge of some important discoveries in the coming years.

    Quote Originally Posted by budwom View Post
    Not sure I want to get into the weeds on this one, but when my wife was growing up at the satellite tracking station in Cadiz Spain, frequent dinner guests were Carl Sagan and J. Allen Hynek, he of Project Blue Book fame (originally hired by the Air Force to debunk UFO stories, he later came to have a lot more respect for UFO reports from military pilots...you can Google him up)...there was a recent TV series based on his experiences...pretty fascinating guy.
    Quote Originally Posted by budwom View Post
    Like Stephen Hawking said, we ought not be too hopeful of having space dudes visit as they might wish to consume us like cocktail shrimp. (I paraphrase)...
    Very cool. There area a lot of characters in the UFO/ET world. There are some guys who are well respected and believe to some degree in UFO/ET, J. Allen Hynek and Stan Friedman are an example.

  11. #31
    Join Date
    Mar 2007
    Location
    Wherever the wind blows and the leaves dance.
    Case #1 - USS Nimitz - 'tic-tac' UFO sighting – 2004

    Over the course of a week in November 2004, a radar operator on board the USS Princeton reports seeing odd and slow-moving objects flying in groups of five to ten off of San Clemente Island, west of the San Diego coast. At an elevation of 28,000 feet, moving at a speed of approximately 120 knots (about 138 miles per hour), the clusters were too high to be birds, too slow to be conventional aircraft, and were not traveling on any established flight path. At the end of the week the radio operator aboard the USS Princeton said they saw over 100 UFOs on their radar.

    A F/A-18 Super Hornet from the USS Nimitz engages 40 foot white, tic-tac shaped UFO via FLIR (state of the art Infrared camera). UFO flies erratically in ways that defy the laws of physics. Going from 60,000 to 50 feet in seconds. Hovering and showing no signs of propulsion. UFO actively jams Pilot Dave Fravor’s radar.

    Article with Chad Underwood, the pilot who recorded the UFO with FLIR.

    To the Stars Academy – Tic Tac UFO Executive Report.

    Article breaking down FLIR images.

    *Podcast* Pilot David Fravor’s podcast with Joe Rogan, as he recounts the event in a two-hour interview.

    *Podcast* Pilot David Fravor’s podcast with Lex Fridman, as he recounts the event in a recent (last week) four-hour interview.

  12. #32
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Steamboat Springs, CO
    Quote Originally Posted by JNort View Post
    "I’m very curious about where most people stand on UFO/ET. So, my questions would be:"
    1. Do you believe UFOs have visited earth?No Why?Fermi Paradox and faster than speed of light travel would dismantle any sentient being
    2. Do you believe extraterrestrials have visited earth? Why? No, the evidence is lacking among other things
    3. If you believe extraterrestrials have visited earth, do you actively search for information?
    4. If you don’t believe extraterrestrials have visited earth, are you open to believing it? Who isn't open to evidence?
    I was gonna quote Fermi, but JNort beat me to it.

    Here is Wiki article -- I actually met Herb York on a few occasions:

    The Fermi paradox, named after Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi, is the apparent contradiction between the lack of evidence for extraterrestrial civilizations and various high estimates for their probability (such as some optimistic estimates for the Drake equation)...

    Although he was not the first to consider this question, Fermi's name is associated with the paradox because of a casual conversation in the summer of 1950 with fellow physicists Edward Teller, Herbert York and Emil Konopinski. While walking to lunch, the men discussed recent UFO reports and the possibility of faster-than-light travel. The conversation moved on to other topics, until during lunch Fermi allegedly said suddenly, "But where is everybody?" (although the exact quote is uncertain).
    Sage Grouse

    ---------------------------------------
    'When I got on the bus for my first road game at Duke, I saw that every player was carrying textbooks or laptops. I coached in the SEC for 25 years, and I had never seen that before, not even once.' - David Cutcliffe to Duke alumni in Washington, DC, June 2013

  13. #33
    Quote Originally Posted by whereinthehellami View Post
    Case #1 - USS Nimitz - 'tic-tac' UFO sighting – 2004

    Over the course of a week in November 2004, a radar operator on board the USS Princeton reports seeing odd and slow-moving objects flying in groups of five to ten off of San Clemente Island, west of the San Diego coast. At an elevation of 28,000 feet, moving at a speed of approximately 120 knots (about 138 miles per hour), the clusters were too high to be birds, too slow to be conventional aircraft, and were not traveling on any established flight path. At the end of the week the radio operator aboard the USS Princeton said they saw over 100 UFOs on their radar.

    A F/A-18 Super Hornet from the USS Nimitz engages 40 foot white, tic-tac shaped UFO via FLIR (state of the art Infrared camera). UFO flies erratically in ways that defy the laws of physics. Going from 60,000 to 50 feet in seconds. Hovering and showing no signs of propulsion. UFO actively jams Pilot Dave Fravor’s radar.

    Article with Chad Underwood, the pilot who recorded the UFO with FLIR.

    To the Stars Academy – Tic Tac UFO Executive Report.

    Article breaking down FLIR images.

    *Podcast* Pilot David Fravor’s podcast with Joe Rogan, as he recounts the event in a two-hour interview.

    *Podcast* Pilot David Fravor’s podcast with Lex Fridman, as he recounts the event in a recent (last week) four-hour interview.
    Thanks for the links to those articles. I've read about these incidents before but not in this depth. Definitely something "strange" was going on out there but who knows if they were extraterrestrial in origin or some other phenomena.

  14. #34
    [QUOTE=whereinthehellami;1289685]I think you are talking about Dr. Mack and he was very well respected Harvard psychiatrist and professor until he got interested in abductions.

    Yes, it was Dr. Mack, a well-respected psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School (I believe, he was the head of the psychiatry dept. at HMS, at one time), who wrote several books about the so-called alien abductees. I never read any of his books but I've read several articles about him and what he wrote. Apparently, before beginning his research, he believed most of the abductees suffered from some form of mental illness (delusion, etc) but after interviewing many of them, he came to the conclusion that most of them did not suffer from mental maladies and he could not adequately explain away the stories that they told about being abducted (and apparently, the stories that many of these totally-unrelated abductees told were quite similar, in terms of the abduction process, the description of the "aliens", the interior of the UFO's, etc). He received a lot of publicity about his books ("Harvard professor believes in aliens", was the type of headline at the time in many newspapers, even though he never specifically said or wrote that) and Harvard Med School began a secret investigation into his research techniques (I'm sure because of the embarrassment of having Harvard associated with UFO's); eventually, the secret investigation leaked out and it became a huge cause celebre in academia and at Harvard, as he was a tenured faculty member.

  15. #35
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Atlanta, GA
    I believe. I subscribe to the eminent astronomer Matthew McConaughey's maxim that "If there wasn't [somebody else out there], it'd be an awful waste of space."
    I am not well-versed enough in astrophysical theory to be able to fully explain myself, but I have enjoyed various intelligent laypersons' conversations as educational thought exercises. Astronomycast in particular is a great podcast with numerous episodes devoted to the more mind-bendy aspects of this topic:

  16. #36
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Raleigh, NC
    Quote Originally Posted by Wander View Post
    Not necessarily, because of relativity and time dilation. A spaceship that travels extremely fast, at almost but not quite the speed of light, could make it to other stars in the galaxy in thousands of years from our perspective, but in only decades from the perspective of a creature on board the spaceship. It sounds wacky, but note that time dilation and relativity have already been proven to be Real Things using very precise measurements.

    But, this is all getting ahead of ourselves. The next step is to look for life in our Solar System. And I think it's totally realistic that we find strong evidence of microbial life on Mars, Venus, Europa, or Enceladus within our lifetimes.
    I'm aware of the so-called Tau Factor. [Have you read Tau Zero by Poul Anderson? Great book]. But that still raises a lot of questions. How do you accelerate a spaceship to 99.99 percent of the speed of light? What kind of structure can withstand the stress? And you'd need a crew that would understand that when they returned to their home base hundreds, perhaps thousands of years would have passed. Would any sentient being be willing to make that trade? Robot might make sense perhaps but bi-pedal humanoids with spindly limbs and big, buggy eyes?

  17. #37
    Quote Originally Posted by jimsumner View Post
    I'm aware of the so-called Tau Factor. [Have you read Tau Zero by Poul Anderson? Great book]. But that still raises a lot of questions. How do you accelerate a spaceship to 99.99 percent of the speed of light? What kind of structure can withstand the stress? And you'd need a crew that would understand that when they returned to their home base hundreds, perhaps thousands of years would have passed. Would any sentient being be willing to make that trade? Robot might make sense perhaps but bi-pedal humanoids with spindly limbs and big, buggy eyes?


    LOL, yea, if you believe the description that most people (who claim to have seen aliens) have given, it doesn't sound like robots to me either. And I'd love to read the autopsy that was done on the alien bodies that were recovered from the UFO crash at Roswell.

  18. #38
    Join Date
    Jun 2008
    Location
    Winston Salem, NC

    UFOs?

    Way above my pay grade. I say we ask Kyrie.

  19. #39
    Join Date
    Mar 2010
    Location
    Atlanta 'burbs
    Quote Originally Posted by ricks68 View Post
    I think you left off #5: Have you ever experienced an anal probe (from an extraterrestrial being)?

    ricks
    Are Urologists extraterrestrial beings? Asking for a friend who has been violated many times recently.

  20. #40
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Raleigh, NC
    You also have to ask at what point does sub-light-speed travel cease to have any practical benefit. Even if a civilization had mastered travel at .999 percent of light speed, an exploratory trip of, let us say, 1,000 light years would still have the crew coming back to the home planet 2,000 years after they left. I don't see any benefits unless this is an extraordinarily long-lived species and/or civilization. A trip across the galaxy would be useless unless it was a one-way trip and why would you do that?

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