Are UFO's Real?

[Hal-9000]

I've been reading some news threads posted by Lance where Goofy is skeptical, despite the overwhelming amount of legitimate, physical proof

Seriously, there are three main schools of thought:

1. The universe is huge and there have been other forms of life. However, those civilizations could be extinct, not interested in us as a species, or are too far away to travel here.
2. There are aliens and they have visited us throughout Earth's history. Interacting with and studying us, as well as imparting knowledge.
3. There are no aliens, we are the only form of intelligent life in the universe.


In one of Carl Sagan's lectures he postulated that if aliens had the intelligence necessary to travel the vast distances in space, they would not consider humans as a worthy species to communicate with. His comparison is how we view ants. I'm not sure that I agree with that because his supposition is that space travel = intelligence that's so advanced, we are no longer interesting as new life forms. When we found out water was likely present on Mars in a certain form, it caused a lot of excitement in our scientific community.


Space is tough to think about because of the vast distances and literal billions of years that have elapsed since the universe began. Entire star systems with planets have came and went, civilizations could have rose and fell a million times over, without us ever knowing about their existence.


We've recorded potential UFO's with cameras and on video. What interests me more are the ancient paintings both on canvas and on rock that depict alien life forms and crafts.

So, do you believe they've visited us?

[deebakes]

i think #1 is the most likely

[DemonGeminiX]

I believe in the possibility of alien life, if we're talking more advanced civilizations with the ability to travel between stars. If we're talking alien life in the form of microbes and stuff like that, then I'd say it's a damn near certainty. Hell, I'll even say that I believe in the possibility that the traveling sort may have been here, or even may be visiting here today. I will not say definitively that they are or are not, since I've seen no legitimate evidence to support either assertion. Just because you don't see it or can't prove it, it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

[Godfather]

[Hal-9000]

I had a discussion with Lance once about the idea they explain starting about a minute in that video above. Short version is that life forms may exist, but the distances are too vast.

It's time and distance that prevent us from meeting our alien friends. Time - they may have existed a billion years ago. Distance - they may exist right now but it would take millions of years to reach us.

To put things into our terms, the closest star to us is Proxima Centauri. It's 4.2 light years away.
A light year is 5,878,625,373,183.6 miles. Multiply that by 4.2 and we arrive at the closest star system.
If we could travel at the speed of light, that would be traveling at 670,616,629 mph. Let's call it 671 million miles per hour.
Physics tells us we can theoretically travel up to light speed, but never go past it. Physics also says that bodies gain mass with velocity.
That's why even if we had the tech to push a vehicle to those speeds, the speed would affect the mass of the ship and the passengers too adversely.

I'll do some quick math for you. The fastest speed we've pushed a craft into space is 36,373 mph. (this is a broad estimate because of distance traveled, beginning and end phases, etc etc) So let's say we can design a ship that travels 50,000 mph. We want to visit our closest star, 4.2 light years away or 24690226567368 miles. It would take 56,370 years to arrive at 50,000 mph. Even if we could travel at one million miles per hour, it will take 2818 years to reach that star. And that's the closest one.

The sad truth may be that even if there are aliens, we can never visit them unless they're in our own solar system.

[DemonGeminiX]

Ok, philosophical debate time: but what if everything we've developed with respect to math and physics is wrong? Physics and math are just theories. Who's to say that another civilization on the other side of the universe hasn't discovered a better system that takes away all of those pesky little speed limits that we say keeps us from going anywhere any time we want to? We're making general assumptions based on our experiences... but our experiences are based on our biases, the system we created. Some scientists say we discovered these theories. I call bullshit on that. We made it all up based on observations we've made over time, but every time we answer a question, our answers give rise to 50 new questions... meaning we might not really understand jack shit at all. Our system could be way off base. We may be handicapping ourselves with our scientific and technological assumptions.

[DemonGeminiX]

One more thing: what if our observations are limited by our 5 senses, and there's a mess of information we're missing because of that? Maybe there are a whole mess of other senses that other beings are capable of that give them a better picture of the universe in which we all live.

[Hal-9000]

I believe in the possibility of alien life, if we're talking more advanced civilizations with the ability to travel between stars. If we're talking alien life in the form of microbes and stuff like that, then I'd say it's a damn near certainty. Hell, I'll even say that I believe in the possibility that the traveling sort may have been here, or even may be visiting here today. I will not say definitively that they are or are not, since I've seen no legitimate evidence to support either assertion. Just because you don't see it or can't prove it, it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

This is pretty much my opinion. Hawking made a good point about trying to see aliens as possibly being non carbon based organic entities as well. We tend to feel that other forms of life have to fit into our parameters or laws of physics, based on the physical properties of the universe we currently understand. We could be wrong , or our information could very well be incomplete.

The things that fascinate me are the paintings with legitimately dated depictions of larger beings with bubbles on their heads and odd looking suits with backpacks. Some canvas paintings have what look like vehicles flying in the sky, complete with lights.

Also, they've tried to reproduce building the pyramids using what materials the Egyptians would have had at the time, and the engineers still can't reproduce the act. The current theory is that it didn't take 10 or 20 generations of people to construct the pyramids, because they were designated for a particular king or pharaoh. They had his lifetime to complete the project. You may have heard about the diagonal tunnels built within, that line up to certain stars exactly if you back up the night sky to 6000 years ago. The angles used are perfect, to within less than one degree. One of the questions is - why? Superstition...air conditioning...night light? There's handfuls of unique things about pyramid construction, too many to list.

Science and engineers aren't saying it can't be done, they're saying we don't know how they arrived at the knowledge to do it.

[Hal-9000]

Ok, philosophical debate time: but what if everything we've developed with respect to math and physics is wrong? Physics and math are just theories. Who's to say that another civilization on the other side of the universe hasn't discovered a better system that takes away all of those pesky little speed limits that we say keeps us from going anywhere any time we want to? We're making general assumptions based on our experiences... but our experiences are based on our biases, the system we created. Some scientists say we discovered these theories. I call bullshit on that. We made it all up based on observations we've made over time, but every time we answer a question, our answers give rise to 50 new questions... meaning we might not really understand jack shit at all. Our system could be way off base. We may be handicapping ourselves with our scientific and technological assumptions.

I just touched on that in a post above. You've heard my theories in the past, our view is just that, ours. It's based on our parameters and our rudimentary discoveries about the universe. We've established four fundamental laws of physics, what if there are eight laws?

example - I know a geologist and he says they revamp their absolutes every 20 years or so. They used to think that a layer of X-material, 20 meters down, equals 30000 years ago. Next year that theory may be debunked and create a whole new timeline and/or layer identification label.

I call it the Galileo Theory. He believed in and proved heliocentrism, meaning that the planets revolve around the sun. For hundreds of years before that, science of the time felt that everything in the universe revolved around the Earth. They locked him up for life because of his discovery (a form of house arrest) Talk about a tough sell...

[Hal-9000]

One more thing: what if our observations are limited by our 5 senses, and there's a mess of information we're missing because of that? Maybe there are a whole mess of other senses that other beings are capable of that give them a better picture of the universe in which we all live.

Completely onboard with that. Even when we imagine aliens being made of mist-like vapors that communicate with thoughts only and not fitting into our normal idea of organic creatures, we're still using our limited parameters to envision the alien. They talk about the fourth and fifth dimensions...we may not be equipped to operate in those realms, therefore we'll never experience them.

*some people feel that aliens and ghosts are portions of our own reality that we create, as in, being viable creatures...but linked more closely to us that we understand. We draw the entities to us, by virtue of existing. Yeah it's heavy/flaky talk Still, we can no more disprove it than prove it.

[Hal-9000]

Something simple to support what DGX and I have said about humans not really understanding the universe around us.

Gravity. A good scientist can explain it, but not what causes it or why it exists. Even Einstein's theory of relativity and special relativity came under scrutiny and criticism as being wrong.

We're talking some of the best minds on our planet and they can't understand the natural world around us. I think it's going to be a long time before the truth of the universe is known.

[Hal-9000]

I think I'm going to settle on number 1 with a side of they might be able to travel here, but we can never travel there.

It's too bad that the overwhelming majority of UFO pictures feature crafts that are circular and look metallic. It really is our perception of how we think they should look, and that's not correct.

[Noilly Pratt]

I think that they might be real, but like a 4 track reel to reel, they are on track #1 and we are on Track #4...we wont know of their presence really but as any recording engineer back in the day can tell you, you can hear faint traces of other tracks due to misaligned heads, etc.

Plus, it's nicer to think that we are not alone. That is not a comforting thing to the average human. So we make up myths, legends, stories...

[Teh One Who Knocks]

Here's my take - I do fully believe that there is other life in the universe, even narrowing it down to our own galaxy, the Milky Way, a tiny section of the universe. It would be very presumptuous of us to think that in the roughly 100 billion stars in our own galaxy and the likely 100 billion planets (or more) in our galaxy, that our small tiny rock was the only one where life evolved. As has been touched up above, the vast distances between stars (the Milky Way is about 100,000 light years across) and our limited knowledge in the realm of physics is what is keeping us from exploring and discovering thew wonders that are out there. Hell, we can't even get people to Mars in less than a few months if we can figure out a way to shield the astronauts from the deadly radiation they would encounter on such a voyage.

But as to the point about intelligent life that has mastered interstellar travel, why can't they exist? And just because we haven't seen them doesn't mean they don't exist. Think back to what I said above, 100 billion stars and 100 billion planets. Even a race of beings far more advanced than us Terrans, it would be mind boggling to think that they would have charted every star and every planet in our galaxy. Finding the earth out of all those stars and planets would make finding a needle in a haystack seem like child's play. It would be like telling someone to head to the Sahara Desert and asking them to find one particular grain of sand. I would think that even for a superior and advanced race that can travel interstellar distances, that finding any particular planet would be trial and error and completely blind luck. Even if you could cut interstellar travel down to months or even weeks, how many ships and how many missions would it take to visit all these 100 billion stars and then narrow that down to the stars that have planets orbiting them? It would take many lifetimes I would think even with a vast fleet of ships.

So, I guess I am a firm believer that there is intelligent life out there, some more advanced, some less advanced, some that are still microscopic and some that have disappeared so many millennia ago, traces of which humans, no matter how far we advance, may never ever find...

[Hal-9000]

Some good points Lance and your post touches on what Sagan said. Kind of the if this, then that scenario.

If the aliens did master interstellar travel, then they would be too far advanced to be interested in us. And I don't believe in part of that. That's why I gave the example of us finding evidence of water on Mars. We became fully interested in just the mere possibility of life. We have to think the aliens would be the same. Unless there are already so many civilizations throughout the universe and we rate lower than trailer park trash on the scale.

That's why I loved the 2005 War of the Worlds movie. SPOILER - the aliens couldn't give a rat's ass about communicating with us or even studying us, they just wanted to harvest humans for mulch