Since traveling at a high percentage of light speed (as we understand it) is impossible for us it's also impossible for any alien race no matter how advanced? How am I proposing that is quick and easy? The affects of speeds near that of light do not change because of varying degrees of tech – they are a constant. Flying a 'heavier that air' craft was thought impossible at the turn of the 20th century now it's pretty quick and easy. Who is to say that interstellar travel won’t be quick and easy in a thousand years? People have been documenting UFOs for thousands of years here are a couple examples: So if we decided to spy on a primitive tribe in the Amazon would they know what we were doing? You seem to think we have peak technology in the universe right now here on earth. This is just silly.
Well the way I see it it's exactly the same. There ain't no difference between a flying saucer and a time machine. People get so hung up on specifics. They miss out on seeing the whole thing. Take South America for example. In South America thousands of people go missing every year. Nobody knows where they go. They just like disappear. But if you think about it for a minute, you realize something. There had to be a time when there was no people. Right? Well where did all these people come from? hmmm? I'll tell you where. The future. Where did all these people disappear to? hmmm? The past. That's right and how did they get there? Flying saucers. Which are really? Yeah you got it. Time machines. I think a lot about this kind of stuff. I do my best thinking on the bus. That how come I don't drive, see? The more you drive, the less intelligent you are.
KC, I don't get that there's an "argument," but maybe I'm being dense. You're saying if there are aliens observing us, it's fascinating. Woofer is saying if there are aliens observing us, he doesn't care. We'll never know until they want us to know. Just different outlooks. By the way, the dude in that reddish space ship is flipping some alien the bird!
I finally checked out this thread. I love this stuff! One of the things that facinates me is the complete disconnect between political ideology and belief in life on other planets/visitors from other worlds/faster than light travel... you name it. I've always known that from personal experience, but it's still a pleasure to read. I'm firmly in the camp of there being life on other worlds and that some of those species, whether carbon-based or not, have discovered ways around the speed of light "limitation" (which is only a limit of our level of science compared to their level or ours in the future), and have visited us on more than one occasion. Why would they bother? They dig our music! They think we are interesting!
My thought is that it would be possible for an advanced race to travel here and study us - i'm definitely not saying that it is happening for sure though.
Cool. For what it's worth, I really agree with your take concerning special relativity (just in case someone out there was doubting you and just in case my 2 cents would matter). But the effects are really small until you get really fast (as you know). If aliens could even get a ship that moves at 80% the speed of light, then they age at 60% a "normal" (stationary) rate, right? Not a huge bonus for such a high speed. An interesting side note to me is that we can't apply our life spans (circa 100 years tops) as something universal. Another life form could easily have a lifespan of thousands of years. It's all based on the evolutionary forces around it. Apparently, aging is not about wear and tear, but rather genetic programming, at least on earth.
I didn't say traveling at a high percentage of the speed of light was impossible for some technology we haven't dreamed up - I just said that I will for the purpose of the argument, pretend it exists and postulate from there. That is not a stand one way or the other. Look again. re: people seeing things for thousands of years - as soon as we unearth a piece of high tech stuff from one of these visits in an archaelogical dig, I'll believe we were visited by aliens, otherwise, these are just works of art you pictured. Apparently the aliens are good enough to erase any evidence that they visited except for the memories of the earthlings.
The whole UFO phenomena is either one of two things to me: 1. Either a big mass hallucination/urban myth perpetuated by dimwits with big imaginations and too much time on their hands. 2. Or the aliens have a Star Trek-like "Prime Directive" where they can not interfere with the development of another culture or have contact with such culture if that contact would jeopardize their society's normal development. We're just too primitive, so they hang out, observe until we reach a certain point in our development and then they will make themselves known. As for the fact that aliens in our minds are either merciless invaders or cuddly utopian peaceniks, I think we will find that there are likely a bit of both in the universe. Hopefully if we did encounter life, it would be the utopian, cuddly variety than say....the Klingons.
Arthur C. Clarke comes to mind with the non interventionist aliens as well. Childhood's End - aliens watch earth and intervene when we are deemed ready to join the other *advanced* civilizations. re: Arthur C. Clarke in reference to - My favorite quote is from the Amazing Randi who says anything suficiently complicated appears to be magic.
I admit that I like Star Trek.......there, I said it. Are you guys happy? But I really do think that the aliens would likely wait until our culture was ready to accept the fact, we are not alone. In fact, a TNG episode dealt with the same thing. The funniest part of that episode that in exchange for helping Riker escape, he had to do the alien nurse. That's not a bad trade at all.
I did a search on this book and apparently the forward was written by Strom Thurmond. I'll go with one thing from the summary on Amazon.com in which he claims we reverse engineer integrated circuits from the remains of the Roswell UFO. If one understands anything at all about this the hard part is creating the process, and I seriously doubt there was a cleanroom and fab line in side the *Roswell UFO*. The end product doesn't explain much of anything. The fact that the documented process for creating microchips is an incremental one fed by advances in design, process and manufacturing means the government would have had to have individually correctly hand pick the information to send out to different companies and individuals across the world, and meter out this process. This doesn't sound much different in the end than Chariots of the Gods.
Got to be a UFO; couldn't possibly be a dark ages impression of a comet or asteroid. Oh well, far be it from me to engage in a little escapeism. It's raining here in Houston today, maybe I'll visit stonedopia where it's always so pretty. Beam me up Scotty!
I love it when people try to find aliens, ufo's, etc. in Renaissance (or late medieval) art. I wonder why art historians don't see the same things?
