Well I wouldn't call it silly. Earthlings make have a long way to go in theoretical physics but I think we have a pretty good handle on the Newtonian Physics that govern the speed and acceleration of mass. All the planets in one galaxy would be a drop in the ocean of statistical probabilty of life existing in the universe. You would probably have to visit thousands of galaxies and remember they are expanding at close to the speed of light and accelerating. So they would be pretty hard to catch.
With our current level of tech we have the ability to manipulate the speed of light. We can slow it down, accelerate it faster than ‘light speed’ through certain mediums, and stop it completely. Who knows what we will be able to do in a hundred, a thousand or ten thousand years. If extra terrestrials were going to cross inter stellar space they would most likely use space folding tech – using gravity to bend and shorten the distance between remote objects. If this is used accelerating up close to or over the speed of light is unnecessary. This sounds like science fiction of course, but isn't everything this way until we make it happen? ----------- The official air force explanation of Roswell is not true; either those witnesses saw a very secret test of some weird technology or they saw something even stranger (insert creepy music here)… ----------- Why would aliens want to make their presence known? They may just want to study us as we study certain animals around the world - unseen and unnoticed.
This is one of my favorite topics. Of course, I want to believe in the event and the phenomenon of alien life. Just so happens that two of my favorite such movies were on the SciFi Channel Sunday afternoon: Fire in the Sky and Roswell. What about "multi-verses?" What does the "Ostrich Brigade" have to say about that? I have an old friend/acquaintance here whose uncle was one of those intelligence officers at Roswell. His name is Walter Haut and he has written a book about the subject. In the trailer for the movie, Roswell, they indicate that some 300+ witnesses have come forward. By the way it was only 4-6 caskets not dozens.
I am not claiming they would colonize earth, but if they had a finite lifespan, they would need to send enough beings to sustain life on their ship to keep it going. You can't send just a little green Adam and Eve to the stars. I am simply arguing both extremes. If space travel is cheap and easy, they would have tech to have removed the evidence before we knew what happened or we'd see a lot more of them. If there tech is so advanced that we cannot detect it and they wish to remain undetected it's no different than supposing there is a god and he watches every one of us - there is no way to prove the matter. The distance to the edge of our own solar system is so vast it boggles the mind. The simplest explanation is we are alone. Anything else is akin to religion.
if their president cut funding on space travel to work on more worldly matters, I want him/she/it/flagu to be leading our country in 2004.
The higher the percentage of the speed of light a ship travels the less the people on board would age. It would not take a great deal of time for the individuals crossing space near the speed of light... We spy on many countries without their knowledge, they sense we are watching them, but they are not sure when or how we do it – does this make us gods in their eyes? No.
Why is it that most of the world's population believes in something that is by any rational analysis , unbelievable? Is our mundane, mortal existence so unbearable? Sea Monsters, Gods of Thunder, sacred cows, ghosts, martyrs receiving 72 virgins, getting swallowed by a whale, creationism, psychic spoon bending, alien abduction, Gaia,eternal life after death. One man's delusion is another man's religion. Also see a round earth, the earth revolves around the sun, etc. Back in the day, those were unbelievable by any rational analysis too. As we learn more about the world surrounding us, we keep learning that what we once were sure of was completely wrong. Unless you think we've reached the end of science, then in 100 years, people will likely be laughing at what we are so certain of now.
I believe there is life beyond our universe...I also think Robin of the Real World San Diego has the biggest cans...What does that mean, absolutely nothing... Anyway, I think something occured and it was covered up, but we'll never know...This and Area 51 are the most intriguing...
Gene, No offense, but your view is what is so unbelievable. You believe that with billions of galaxies with billions of stars in each, our solar system is the only one that spawned life?
If one accepts the premise of light speed travel, and proposes tech beyond our ken to propel it, then you are arguing the interstellar planetary travel is quick and easy which is not the same argument. I was pointing out that if space travel takes place on at a speed close to what we understand (edit: with today's tech I meant), they would have to have a crew that is self sustaining in many ways, and if it was quick, they would be here more often. The fact that with better technology and more people spread all over the world we earthlings see them less and less points to the simplest explanation - they don't exist at all. The countries we spy on, know the satellites' schedules, even the oldest Tom Clancy novels acknowledge this. They know we could be listening in on anything transmitted via radio waves. And we use methods that can be deducted by anyone with a basic knowledge of physics. If some thing from a different world was here on our planet, spying on us in a harmless manner, and is so good at hiding itself that we can not detect it, it might as well be Satan, Thor or Apollo, because that's how real it is to us.
Because it's fun! It's funny has we can use the "astronomical scale" argument to prove (number of stars) or disprove (sheer distances) our preferred belief. I note that no one has picked up on the multiverse argument. Does anybody know anything about that theory. Michael Crichton's recent book about multiverse travel is coming out soon, I think. I forget the name. Twenty-first century scientists go back to the 14th-15th century as I recall.
In an effort to be on topic: The Drake Equation My layman's estimate of fi is that it is zero and we are an abberation. http://www.seti-inst.edu/seti/seti_science/Welcome.html N = R* • fp • ne • fl • fi • fc • L N = The number of civilizations in The Milky Way Galaxy whose electromagnetic emissions are detectable. R* =The rate of formation of stars suitable for the development of intelligent life. fp = The fraction of those stars with planetary systems. ne = The number of planets, per solar system, with an environment suitable for life. fl = The fraction of suitable planets on which life actually appears. fi = The fraction of life bearing planets on which intelligent life emerges. For more information, please visit Dr. William Calvin's "The Drake Equation's fi" fc = The fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space. L = The length of time such civilizations release detectable signals into space.
Ya'll got me wrong. I have no problem with millions of life forms arising from the promordial ooze on the billions of possible planets, perhaps a billion years before us. But if they are of physical form and therefore obey the laws of newtonian physics the possibility of them overcoming millions of light years of space to locate a tiny speck of life that may exist on one in a billion planets, well monkeys will probably fly out of my butt first. And what I am questioning is why people make up irrational myths to explain what they don't understand. I can't explain gravity but I don't have to make up a story about invisable rubber bands or something. My favorite quote is from the Amazing Randi who says anything suficiently complicated appears to be magic.
What would you say to the surgical nurse who saw the alien bodies with her own eyes while awake and in the comany of many others? Just because something is irrational in our experience does not make it irrational in its essence. Go, Buddha!
"Commander! The robo-monkeys are in place in the Peterson human's buttocks. We are ready to init flying sequence." By the way, I firmly believe that there is other life in our galaxy. Drake equation, shmake equation. There are *three* candidates for DNA life possibility in our own solar system (Earth, Mars, and Europa... while Mars probably has no life now and may have never had life, it's damn close to habitable). But oh, our sun is special! No it's not. It's very run of the mill. We're finding extrasolar planets now by the dozen, and we're eventually going to find some of the right mass, at the right distance from their stars... I don't really believe we've had visitors here, but it's not crazy to wonder about it. It's natural, and I don't see what's annoying about it. Well, it historically annoyed the Catholic Church, and they literally burned Giordano Bruno at the stake for suggesting there might be life somewhere other than earth.
The attribution isn't that important but isn't that Arthur C. Clarke? To be exact most of physics can't explain anything, but we can describe what we see, and perform experiments that show whether or not these hypothesis hold true and extrapolate from there. Then we go on the assumption that these so called laws of physics hold true across the universe. Of course one has to use Einstein's stuff when we approach the speed of light (1/10th c? or so before it's signficant and Einstein's equations simplify to Newtonian at low levels of c) and all bets are off at the atomic or molecular level. Maybe there's some leap of tech at the atomic or molecular level or some faster than light jump we have yet to reach or intradimensional leaping tech. When's the last time someone was awarded a Physics Nobel for something that became an underclassmen requirement? I had to take quantum physics for electrical engineering. Most of the material in the class was discovered before WW 2. We'll always be uncovering fantastic new stuff, but making interplanetary space travel easy for humans is a way off, and easy interstellar travel is even farther out.
I'm sorry, Woofer, you make a good point. "Commander! The robo-monkeys are in place in the Peterson human's buttocks. We are ready to init flying sequence." -- Arthur C. Clarke.
Our sun is very special in a way. We only have one. IIRC most solar systems have binary stars. (edit: I thought what I heard was this would make most systems uninhabitable by life as we know it.) But you're assuming carbon based life like here on earth. Maybe there are different forms of life that could survive on a gas giant like Jupiter or even on Mercury. Of course all of this information could be embedded in my brain because I watched Cosmos during my formative years. re:this SF centered piece makes the same assumptions about forms of life. http://www.sff.net/people/mmolvray/exobio/astron.htm re: are benign stars common http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=13469
(1) About half are multiple star systems, from the best astronomers can tell of systems closest to us in our galaxy. And I think you're correct that they appear to be less "livable." But hey, a lot of us like Texas, right? (edit: info from a NASA Q&A page). (2) That's fun. Don't get me started on non-DNA life forms! We could have microscopic forms of life existing in dirt ON EARTH that we'd never find with our typical PCR routines. Estimates are that about 90% of microbe species have gone unidentified at this point, so never mind what else might be in our own soil. Surely other types of replicating organic molecules are conceivable.
