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UFOs

Started by Aaron A Aardvark, 07 August, 2010, 10:32:51 PM

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Lobo Baggins

Quote from: Aaron A Aardvark on 08 August, 2010, 06:48:51 AM
Behold! Our new alien overlords!



They were a LOT more impressive in real life.


It's one of those Chinese lantern things...
The wages of sin are death, but the hours are good and the perks are fantastic.

Peter Wolf

Quote from: vzzbux on 08 August, 2010, 12:37:22 PM
TBH if I was an advanced alien race I wouldn't bother visiting this overpopulated dying mud ball.







V

This planet is not overpopulated generally speaking but it is within areas of high population densities like the UK for instance.


Quote from: House of Usher on 08 August, 2010, 01:41:39 PM
The reason I cannot keep an open mind about beings from outer space visiting our planet is that aliens would be limited by the same physical constraints we face ourselves regarding space travel: a vast interstellar gulf of space to cross, the improbability of achieving faster than light travel, the vast amounts of energy needed to sustain space flight at any kind of a worthwhile speed, and the sheer volume of supplies a vehicle would have to carry to sustain a crew for travel over the long periods of time necessary to travel from one star to another.

Enthusiasts of the implausible would say that you only need to imagine aliens that have invented a faster-than-light drive or some means of creating and utilising worm-holes, and a way of producing unlimited energy for free, who don't eat, and who have a vastly greater lifespan than our own. That's four major 'ifs' right there.



I am not an enthusiast of UFOs but what you are doing is transposing your understanding or the general understanding of physics etc onto the entire universe and presuming that aliens if they exist would be subject to the same restraints when in reality its probably not a simple as that.

100 years ago you would have said that space travel would be absolutely impossible or implausible to any extent and therefore aliens would be even more implausible in theory than they are now which is slightly less implausible.

Something that you say is implausible is only based on your understanding of life and the universe or mine for that matter but it cannot be 100 percent ruled out because mankind is in no position to make those kinds of claims or assertions as it cannot be proved that X dont exist and Y is simply not possible etc etc.

This is where hypothesising and speculation and theorising somehow becomes fact when it isnt.

NASA footage :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7IzXHsym7k&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJyuQVIFdKo&feature=related

Worthing Bazaar - A fete worse than death

Emperor

Quote from: vzzbux on 08 August, 2010, 12:37:22 PM
TBH if I was an advanced alien race I wouldn't bother visiting this overpopulated dying mud ball.

Assuming they are here to speak to we primitive land mammals...
if I went 'round saying I was an Emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away!

Fractal Friction | Tumblr | Google+

House of Usher

Quote from: Peter Wolf on 08 August, 2010, 02:59:42 PM
I am not an enthusiast of UFOs but what you are doing is transposing your understanding or the general understanding of physics etc onto the entire universe and presuming that aliens if they exist would be subject to the same restraints when in reality its probably not a simple as that.

No, I did specifically mention magic aliens that can circumvent the laws of physics as we understand them. Science fiction is full of them. Real life isn't.

Quote from: Peter Wolf on 08 August, 2010, 02:59:42 PM
100 years ago you would have said that space travel would be absolutely impossible or implausible to any extent and therefore aliens would be even more implausible in theory than they are now which is slightly less implausible.

That's quite an assertion. Chances are, 100 years ago I might have been reading the science fiction of the time and thinking about the moon not being especially far away and supposing that it might be possible somehow to manufacture a vehicle capable of crossing the distance.

Quote from: Peter Wolf on 08 August, 2010, 02:59:42 PM
This is where hypothesising and speculation and theorising somehow becomes fact when it isnt.

Hmm. All I can say to that is I have seen enough Star Trek to know that there is a theoretical basis for faster-than-light travel, time travel and teleportation. Just because any of those things is theoretically possible doesn't mean that they are literally possible in any real sense.
STRIKE !!!

Peter Wolf

#19
Quote from: House of Usher on 08 August, 2010, 04:28:33 PM
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 08 August, 2010, 02:59:42 PM
I am not an enthusiast of UFOs but what you are doing is transposing your understanding or the general understanding of physics etc onto the entire universe and presuming that aliens if they exist would be subject to the same restraints when in reality its probably not a simple as that.

No, I did specifically mention magic aliens that can circumvent the laws of physics as we understand them. Science fiction is full of them. Real life isn't.



Thats not quite what you said but if you had said "aliens that can circumvent the laws of physics as we know them" instead of saying "magic aliens" i wouldnt have felt the need to reply to that part of your comment as that is what i was saying in my reply.


Quote from: House of Usher on 08 August, 2010, 04:28:33 PM

Quote from: Peter Wolf on 08 August, 2010, 02:59:42 PM
100 years ago you would have said that space travel would be absolutely impossible or implausible to any extent and therefore aliens would be even more implausible in theory than they are now which is slightly less implausible.

That's quite an assertion. Chances are, 100 years ago I might have been reading the science fiction of the time and thinking about the moon not being especially far away and supposing that it might be possible somehow to manufacture a vehicle capable of crossing the distance.


Its not an assertion.

You are making my point for me here perfectly and i should have really said 200 yrs ago or more when the idea of travelling to the moon was utterly proposterous.Anyway the idea was there at that point but actually doing it is another thing altogether.
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 08 August, 2010, 02:59:42 PM
This is where hypothesising and speculation and theorising somehow becomes fact when it isnt.

Quote

Hmm. All I can say to that is I have seen enough Star Trek to know that there is a theoretical basis for faster-than-light travel, time travel and teleportation. Just because any of those things is theoretically possible doesn't mean that they are literally possible in any real sense.

I dont watch Star Trek so i have no idea how much of Star Trek which is fiction is based on current understanding of faster than light travel etc.

What you really should be saying is faster-than-light travel isnt literally possible at this point in time going by the current understanding of physics.

What i meant by my comment was that aliens and space travel cannot be *totally* ruled out and i am not going to "solve questions" or speculate or anything else because ultimately no one knows officially speaking so ultimately you have to be open minded to a certain extent to the idea rather than trying to rationalise it and dismiss it out of hand.You can rationalise it as much as you like but it cant be ruled out.
Worthing Bazaar - A fete worse than death

House of Usher

#20
I appreciate all of that. You are quite right that 200 years ago I might have believed space travel, even to the moon, to be totally impossible. I would not even have begun to understand what might be involved. The reason I currently believe intersteller travel in a spacecraft to be impossible is because I have a reasonable understanding of distances in space and the likely duration of journeys at speeds up to and including light speed. To go any faster than that you have to somehow bring two points in space closer together than they would be were you not travelling between them. They do it all the time in Star Trek. I happen not to believe it to be possible.

I'm only putting forward a rational argument for the non-existence of alien visitors from another world; I haven't tested it empirically.

Whilst it's great to be open-minded about everything, most of us get by with just a working model of how we believe the world to be. That involves some of us not believing in things we have no evidence for and which it is not useful for us to believe in. Conversely, some people choose to believe in things they have no evidence for because it is serves some purpose for them to believe in those things.

To put it bluntly, people who believe that UFOs are the spacecraft of extraterrestrial visitors believe it because for some reason they want it to be true.
STRIKE !!!

Aaron A Aardvark

The old adage is: causality, relativity, faster than light - any two from three. Causality looks cast in stone and Relativity has stood up to everything that's been thrown at it so FTL has to go. (Star Trek cheats.)

Anyway, I like those paper balloons for my UFOs. Right speed, right colour, right size/distance, etc.

But they really creeped me out.

House of Usher

#22
About 1979, when UFOlogy was coming to the end of another spell of being fashionable again (I think it went out of fashion altogether in the '80s), my family was returning home from a weekend at my grandparents'. The driver, who went on the become my stepfather, saw some strange lights in the sky (helicopters with searchlights), and stopped the car on the Hollingbury golf course to get closer and have a proper look at the 'UFOs,' which he thought might be 'flying saucers.'

I didn't like the idea at all. First of all I didn't believe in flying saucers, so I thought it was silly to be entertaining daft ideas like that when it was late and I had school the next morning. If it had been bats or a fox I might have been more interested. Secondly, I had seen This Island Earth and quite a lot of The Invaders on TV, and I reasoned that if my mother's future husband thought the lights might be alien spacecraft, then it wasn't sensible to go presenting yourself as a target for abduction or heat ray vaporisation.

:lol:
STRIKE !!!

Peter Wolf

Quote from: House of Usher on 08 August, 2010, 06:20:44 PM


Whilst it's great to be open-minded about everything, most of us get by with just a working model of how we believe the world to be. That involves some of us not believing in things we have no evidence for and which it is not useful for us to believe in. Conversely, some people choose to believe in things they have no evidence for because it is serves some purpose for them to believe in those things.

To put it bluntly, people who believe that UFOs are the spacecraft of extraterrestrial visitors believe it because for some reason they want it to be true.

Thats true enough.Talking for myself i couldnt care less if they exist or not and i find there are enough things going on down here that are are far more important to think about than thinking about or researching space aliens.

I have seen a couple of things that cannot be explained as easily as being paper lanterns.One of which was a red object or very bright red light that was on the top of an area of the South Downs next to Alfriston.It was dark so i couldnt make out an actual object as such only the red light was visible.I was watching from the direction of the church facing east.The object took off from the top of the hill at 45 degrees with the red light going off intermittently until it continued upwards at the same angle until disappeared.There was no sound from the object and it was a clear sky.

I had been drinking but nowhere near enough to impair judgement.It was Xmas Eve and we had a lock in in this pub and i only went out for some fresh air and a short walk down to the church.I kind of had an "urging" to go for a walk right there and then as well.Of course no one else believed a word of it when i went back to the pub but there clearly was something odd going on.

The really curious thing was over to the right of the object there was a helicopter overhead that was circling the area and hovering as if it was observing the object.The helicopter was the kind that is used by the police.



The only footage i have seen that is convincing if taken at face value is the NASA footage.I havent seen any amateur footage that is convincingly a UFO.
Worthing Bazaar - A fete worse than death

Emperor

I have to say my main disappointment has been with the aliens people claim to meet, as they don't really seem that... alien. Most of them wouldn't look out of place in early 20th Century sci-fi. It is pretty likely they'd be so far beyond us they'd not even consider us worth talking to:

http://www.donhopkins.com/drupal/node/33

We'd also be more likely to encounter some kind of Bracewell/Von Neumann probe as they'd be an easy way to seed the galaxy and could survive long after their cretors are gone. Just pray they aren't Berserker probes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracewell_probe
if I went 'round saying I was an Emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away!

Fractal Friction | Tumblr | Google+

TordelBack

#25
Yes, it's pretty clear that by the far the most likely scenario for alien contact will be with a Von Neumann machine of some kind.  

Our own planet's space programme seems to be going that way, and looking at those that think a lot about these things, for the 'no-hyperspace' hard SF writers interstellar travel is now overwhelmingly non-biological.  The most promising scenario is a tiny near-lightspeed probe (the smallest possible payload atop some elaborate reactive drive) that contains nano tech and AI sufficient to use local materials to build a viable avatar, or even make a biological form that can have a stored consciousness implanted into it. Something like Charles Stross' 'star wisps'.

As SF authors like Baxter make painfully clear, space travel for biological entities is an exercise in impossibly difficult plumbing.

zombemybabynow

Got a taxi ride home to my new house, just outside guilford on Friday night.  The cabbie informed me there were UFO sightings in the mid 60s at a nearby railway bridge!
Good manners & bad breath get you nowhere

SmallBlueThing

Id just like to point out what nonsense you all do speak. Space aliens, what with their space technology and shit, will not be bound by physics, which was invented on Earth, after all. Their spaceships just go really fast and that. Dont you people know anything?
SBT
.

The Legendary Shark

Most people assume that the aliens (if aliens there are) come from other solar systems.

They may come from other dimensions.

They may come from Venus or Mars - from the past or the future.

They may be a Terrestrial species who live underground or in the deep oceans.

They may not even exist at all.

For my part, I simply don't know what to make of it.
[move]~~~^~~~~~~~[/move]




House of Usher

So the Dalek construct 'Edwin Bracewell' was a knowing reference to this sort of thing that would have tipped off viewers who are well versed in hard SF that he was a Dalek plant and therefore not to be completely trusted?
STRIKE !!!