Its a very interesting and controversal event. Some of you may have seen a broadcast on Unsolved Mysteries about it, some nurse from a local hospital (she remained anonymous) that after the incident, dozens of baby/infant caskets were specially odered. Anyone have more input?
If aliens had the ability to transport themselves in just a small proportion of their lifetime between the stars, they would be smart enough to land in Washington DC or New York City and whatever technology they used would make them appear as gods. "Manned" interplanetary space travel is so hard that they would have to being using technology that exists only in our imagination and essentially beyond our current understanding of physics. The idea that they would crash land in some deserted area is preposterous and a very small minded anthropomorphism.
Originally posted by Woofer If aliens had the ability to transport themselves in just a small proportion of their lifetime between the stars, they would be smart enough to land in Washington DC or New York City ... Why? What if they don't care to make contact? ... The idea that they would crash land in some deserted area is preposterous and a very small minded anthropomorphism. So, advanced civilizations will never be subject to human..errr...alien error?
woofer -- why in the world would you presume to know the intentions of beings from another planet, if they exist? you're substituting your rationale and judgment for creatures from another galaxy...how in the world can you do that?
My wife is from Roswell and I have spent a lot of time there. She always says the only aliens she has ever seen in Roswell are illegal aliens.
If one understands the problem of interplanetary travel, one would have to question the odds of having an accident in the middle of the sticks here on planet earth versus anywhere else in the path. I will go with the assumption that the simplest explanation applies, if travel was easy for them, why not more visits, and if it was expensive for them it doesn't make any sense at all to send a small force - you'd send a self sustaining colony. They don't have to land here if they want to learn anything about us - we've been spitting off data about ourselves at the speed of light since the 1900's.
and if it was expensive for them it doesn't make any sense at all to send a small force - you'd send a self sustaining colony. The first time we went to the moon, and the first time we go to Mars, we never even considered sending a self-sustaining colony. Anyway, you're again working from our perspective. if travel was easy for them, why not more visits, Perhaps aliens would have sent one "team" to each of 1000 solar systems or something like that. Some make it back, some don't. There are a billion explanations, and I don't think it's a good idea to try to explain a hypothetical alien's behavior based on our own culture, values, experiences, etc. There are human societies that believe or do bizarre things that the rest of us can't explain - who knows what alien cultures would be like.
we work off the notion of limited resources...that's the very fundamental element of the study of economics. but that notion may not apply to an alien civilization for any number of reasons...some of which may completely go beyond anything we understand about our universe.
I think that people that believe in UFO's probably don't grasp the concept of astronomic scale and the utter insignificance it renders to our beloved planet. Also they usually assume that these visitor's somehow achieve speeds that approach the speed of light when the energy requirement to do so increases exponentially for bodies with any measurable mass.
Originally posted by Woofer If one understands the problem of interplanetary travel, one would have to question the odds of having an accident in the middle of the sticks here on planet earth versus anywhere else in the path. How do you know what their accident rate is anywhere else in the path? I will go with the assumption that the simplest explanation applies, if travel was easy for them, why not more visits, More than what? How do you know how many visits there are? Maybe there's only one crahs out of a million visits. and if it was expensive for them it doesn't make any sense at all to send a small force - you'd send a self sustaining colony. Maybe they want to observe, not colonize. If they can travel across the galaxy, I would imagine that research of other sentient would be yield more than just colonizing the planet. And FWIW, some claim that there are possible 'bases', one off the coast of Chile (deep sea). They don't have to land here if they want to learn anything about us - we've been spitting off data about ourselves at the speed of light since the 1900's. I don't think they would be interested in Leave it to Beaver reruns. Then again, maybe there's a cult on Alpha Cantauri ...
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0345409469/qid=1077558519/sr=2-3/ref=sr_2_3/002-8295920-8629600
Yea, I think that's a pretty easy argument. But since I am a 'Physic's For Non-science Majors' kind of guy I'll just post my points for research prior to the debate and not really go out and get all the cut and paste. 1. Estimated number of stars, with solar systems, guestimate the number of inhabited planets, with intellegent life. (Carl Sagan) 2. Estimate the probable distribution of said planets within the 12.5 billion light years to the third power x pi area of the populated unverse to yield the probable disitance of our nearest intelligent neighbor 3. If that number exceeds 50 light years I would argue that no neighbor could statistically located Earth since we have only been emmitting electomagnetic signals for less than 100 years. ( so the aliens hear the remnants of Marconi's first message and immediatly jump in a ship traveling at the speed of light for Earth) 4. Light only reaches the speed of light because it has no mass. Once you add even a little mass to your spaceship you have real problems with the amount of energy required to accelerate anywhere close to the speed of light. So far man has achieved around 17,500 miles per hour. Light travels 186,000 miles per second. My calculator won't show the percentage , but it isn't much. 5. And thats not even discussing the distortion of mass factor.
I liked Sagan, but he clearly set his boundaries to what the logical human mind would or could accept. For instance, 'logic' years ago would have led him to conclude that elements of quantum physics are impossibilities, yet Science has now proven them true, so he will accept them anyway. He would be waiting until the end of time for a Scientific 'proof' of God, while others will use their 'faith' to understand more than he, IMHO.
Gene, Einstein showed what happens when approaching the speed of light. But does that preclude going faster than the speed of light? Are we aware of anything that appears to be faster than the speed of light? Do you believe that wormholes could exist? Do you think we are near the end of understanding physics?
3. If that number exceeds 50 light years I would argue that no neighbor could statistically located Earth since we have only been emmitting electomagnetic signals for less than 100 years. ( so the aliens hear the remnants of Marconi's first message and immediatly jump in a ship traveling at the speed of light for Earth) This is silly. We don't know the technologies of any theoretical set of aliens. For all we know, they could have telescopes and have identified us instead of finding our own signals. Or, they might just have visited every planet in the galaxy just to see what's out there. Again, you're looking at it from a "what can we do" and "what would we do" perspective.
My two cents: we are nowhere near the "end" of understanding physics. I don't event think an "end" is a reasonable concept there. For what it's worth, even if other beings could only travel at, say, 5% the speed of light, they could still get here. Who's to say they have our types of lifespans, or can't use some sort of suspended animation? All that being said, I still think it's highly unlikely that Roswell involved little green aliens. For those interested, look into: 1. The Drake equation. 2. Fermi's paradox. It's all just philosophical rambling, but it's at least an intelligent way to start thinking about these things.
There have been some experiments that claim to exceed the speed of light but the results are not readly reproducable so are not as yet scientific theory. The real problem with this speed of light/alien travel idea is light has no mass. Speculate all you want about light but include a grain of sand and the energy budget becomes astronomical. As my new sig says, I know I have no conception of Quantum Physics. It is counter-intuitive and outside the realm of human experience. Understand Physics? Hell, we don't even know what gravity is.
