Lets talk about UFOs

[dgaddis]

Okay vSalonistas, lets get weird. Lets talk about UFOs. Where this thread is coming from:

A little while back Joe Rogan had Tom Delonge on his podcast - he's a former Blink182 member and now runs To The Stars Academy, which is all about investigating UFOs. In the podcast the dude just sounds loony as can be, I told my wife "you can hear the crazy." He says he knows things, and is working with these top former government officials and scientists, but he can't say who, or what me knows yet.

Fast forward a few weeks and this was all over the news. Former Pentagon UFO official: 'We may not be alone' - CNNPolitics

So - what do yall think? Is an intelligent species from somewhere else coming to visit us? Small likelihood? Absolutely happening? No effin way?

Ever seen anything weird yourself? When I was in college me and three other guys were driving from Statesboro, GA to Detroit, MI for the Formula SAE contest, it's a 13+ hour drive. Somewhere in either Kentucky or Ohio we saw something weird. It was at night, and three lights (like tips of a triangle) moved from behind the trees over the road, followed the road out ahead of us, then moved off the opposite direction they came from. They didn't rotate, and they seemed to change direction nearly instantaneously. The whole thing lasted, maybe 3 to 5 seconds. Three of us were awake at the time, and we all saw it, no one was drunk or high or anything. Not saying it was aliens, almost certainly wasn't, but I don't know what it was. I mean, if there are aliens smart enough to come visit us I think they'd be smart enough not to put lights on their spaceship, assuming they don't want to be seen.

[vertical_doug]

The reason aliens haven't contacted us is they are looking for intelligent life.

[monadnocky]

My thoughts:

Yes, there has been, or is, or will be, very intelligent life in the universe. Somewhere. It's just so big. And old. And will be getting a lot older. However, given the "tyranny of light", as well as the incomprehensible, enormous vastness of interstellar space (as in, you, me, and everyone reading this simply do not have the cognitive architecture to even begin to comprehend its size), as well as the vastness of timescales involved - why would we assume that such life is coterminous with our lifespan as a species?
- there is no way that intelligent species will ever encounter one another.

I also believe that it is much more likely that a technologically advanced species will destroy itself before advancing technologically enough for any sort of extended space journeys. This is why I think it's a 50% shot at best that we will ever set foot on Mars, and 99% likely that Mars will be the extent of humankind's sojurns.

And FTL travel? Yeah.... ummm, not with any contemporary understanding of physics. Not saying there's something we don't understand, but it would be pretty... well, contrary to the basic principles of cosmology.

And I don't know why, when we see something we don't understand, we jump to the oddest and most unlikely of explanations (as you've kind of hinted at above).

It would be cool. But I just don't think so, given the above.

[sine]

Never saw anything........other than meteors.

I'm betting that the odds are pretty good that other beings are out there.

Disappointed that space exploration has stalled for so many years.

[Saab2000]

Disappointed that space exploration has stalled for so many years.

Telescopes and the science are evolving rapidly. I watch a ton of stuff about astronomy and much of what we have learned has only been discovered in the past 20 years. It's a fascinating subject to me.

On the subject of UFOs I'm a bit skeptical because the science (as we understand it) of interstellar travel being basically impossible in units of time we understand. That said, the galaxy (and there are countless more galaxies) is so vast that it seems almost impossible that life doesn't exist elsewhere. In fact, I would bet life exists or has existed elsewhere in this solar system. The moons of Jupiter and Saturn seem likely candidates, having large bodies of water.

[monadnocky]

On the subject of UFOs I'm a bit skeptical because the science (as we understand it) of interstellar travel being basically impossible in units of time we understand. That said, the galaxy (and there are countless more galaxies) is so vast...

The tossed-around order of magnitude is that there are 100 billion galaxies. GALAXIES. And that's considered the low end. May be over a trillion.
It's hubris of the highest order, given that, to believe that we're alone.

[Corso]

I figure if we landed on the moon, why not others out there traveling about? If we exist, why not others?

I believe most UFO sighting are our own top secret stuff flying around.

I read “Chariots of the Gods” when I was a kid, some stuff made sense to me.

Some stuff, not so much.

I like evidence. Ancient art and structures like the Pyramids around the world make me think….hmmmm, maybe.

Crop circles---man made.

I think Leonardo Da Vinci and Miguel Induráin came from another planet.

[Saab2000]

The tossed-around order of magnitude is that there are 100 billion galaxies. GALAXIES. And that's considered the low end. May be over a trillion.
It's hubris of the highest order, given that, to believe that we're alone.

I completely agree. I used the word 'countless' because numbers like 'hundreds of billions' in reference to galaxies (and it's hard to fathom the size of our own galaxy in terms of distance) lose meaning. It's essentially impossible to grasp the size of the universe. We're just now seeing stellar events that happened millions or even billions of years ago.

On August 17th of this year astronomers observed the collision of two neutron stars. This event took place roughly 130 million years ago.

[sk_tle]

I figure if we landed on the moon, why not others out there traveling about? If we exist, why not others?

Well in term of scale going on the moon was pretty much like Christopher Columbus rolling from one side of his bed to the other.

The guys who traveled on the moon didn't need much room in their spaceship. We'd need to travel so far that it would likely take thousands of generations of us to maybe reach some sort of comparable life forms which means being able to create large enough space ships to be self sustainable in term of energy, food supply, culture, and enough people for the pool gene to not degenerate too much. This is probably the same for any othe comparable intelligent lifeform far far away from us. Then we'd have to be lucky enough to find each others.

[fiveller]

I think Leonardo Da Vinci and Miguel Induráin came from another planet.

Da Vinci doped too?

If we ever make it past the edge of our solar system, it likely won't be our carbon-based versions but our silicon-based ones. Bags of meat don't do space travel very well but, as Voyager has shown, little machines do a bunch better. The time it would take just to get to our next door neighbor is enormous with the technology we have and our present understanding of physics.

Alpha Centauri: Our First Target for Interstellar Probes

just a reminder of the time scale of our own existence: Timeline of human prehistory - Wikipedia

[dgaddis]

I also believe that it is much more likely that a technologically advanced species will destroy itself before advancing technologically enough for any sort of extended space journeys.

There's similar theories regarding time travel, which is another idea you can go down the wormhole with (figuratively speaking). Some people say the best proof time travel doesn't/can't/wont ever happen is that we've never met anyone from the future. But then some people say you could only go as far back as when the time machine was invented anyhow. And lets be honest, if you can't go back far enough to pet a dinosaur, what's the point?

Also, I bet prehistoric hunting would be an extremely profitable business.

[deano]

Some interesting stuff about these kind of questions from the Jesuits of all people - the church has been interested in this, especially, like, do you baptize aliens? There's tons of fiction treating the matter too. Some philosophers even positing multiple incarnations on other worlds, etc. -- important if a transcendent God became immanent/present once, it could do it again, and why not on other worlds to other entities?

[fastupslowdown]

but if we identified them, they wouldn't be UFO's then...

[fastupslowdown]

Some interesting stuff about these kind of questions from the Jesuits of all people - the church has been interested in this, especially, like, do you baptize aliens? There's tons of fiction treating the matter too. Some philosophers even positing multiple incarnations on other worlds, etc. -- important if a transcendent God became immanent/present once, it could do it again, and why not on other worlds to other entities?

Don't the Mormon's believe in the planet Kolob or something?

[monadnocky]

There's similar theories regarding time travel, which is another idea you can go down the wormhole with (figuratively speaking). Some people say the best proof time travel doesn't/can't/wont ever happen is that we've never met anyone from the future. But then some people say you could only go as far back as when the time machine was invented anyhow. And lets be honest, if you can't go back far enough to pet a dinosaur, what's the point?

Also, I bet prehistoric hunting would be an extremely profitable business.

Now THAT would be hunting!

An acquaintance of mine - a bona fide astrophysicist - states that any notion of time travel must, by definition, involve FTL travel. As he puts it, by any contemporary understanding, this is simply impossible - that is, an infinite amount of energy would be needed to accelerate any particle past the speed of light. This does not, however, apply to any particle that has always have travelled faster than the speed of light, since the Big Bang. Of course the existence of such particles (yes- tachyons!) is a hypothesis that is impossible to test. But who knows. Maybe they're out there. Or maybe not.

[vertical_doug]

Now THAT would be hunting!

An acquaintance of mine - a bona fide astrophysicist - states that any notion of time travel must, by definition, involve FTL travel. As he puts it, by any contemporary understanding, this is simply impossible - that is, an infinite amount of energy would be needed to accelerate any particle past the speed of light. This does not, however, apply to any particle that has always have travelled faster than the speed of light, since the Big Bang. Of course the existence of such particles (yes- tachyons!) is a hypothesis that is impossible to test. But who knows. Maybe they're out there. Or maybe not.

Not exactly. You are thinking of time in a classical sense. To go backwards in time, you need to go FTL. To go forward in time, you only need to be approaching FTL. As you approach FTL, time slows, so in a relative sense you are traveling forward in time. Time is relative. Looking at the universe is to look back in time.

The other problem is the big bang. The big bang is not a place, it is a when. It is the start of time when space starts expanding. It is not the galaxies that are moving away from us, on a cosmic scale, the galaxies are stationary and the space is expanding between us. There is no edge to the universe because if everything started at the big bang, everywhere is the center of the universe. Does your head hurt yet? Feynman thought eating mushrooms would help.


What's causing the universe to expand? Dark energy. It's dark because we don't know what it is. We have some work to do as a species.

It is possible this is all just a simulation and none of it is real.. It is just a plausible as physics.

[monadnocky]

^^^ Yeah I recall that to go to Proxima Centauri and back at light speed would take 10ish years, give or take.
Problem is, when you got back to earth, all of your friends would have died several billion years ago.

[progetto]

I teleport to other solar systems regularly

[Saab2000]

^^^ Yeah I recall that to go to Proxima Centauri and back at light speed would take 10ish years, give or take.
Problem is, when you got back to earth, all of your friends would have died several billion years ago.

This is where my head starts to hurt.

As for the work we need to do as a species, yes. That said, we've come quite a ways in our understanding of the universe in just the past few decades. Still, trying to grasp relativity is tough even for really smart people.

Our current understanding of physics makes it hard for me to believe in UFOs.

[jumphigher]

I dont think mankind will ever be able to truly travel long distances in space due to the (imo) impossible to overcome logisitics. I do believe though that there has to be some truth in the belief that alien spacecraft are visiting earth. Most sightings are undoubtedly completely wrong, but.. they cant all be wrong, can they? I feel like with the proliferation of cameras and video now in the world, eventually inarguable evidence will be found in favor of visitors. Either that, or ours or some other gov't has incredibly advanced technology we dont know about.