Aliens, Area 51 and the Unknown...

[Five-hole]

Intelligent life can and does exist within our Universe. The anthropic principle -- that we ourselves are here -- prove that life is possible and also that life itself is possible. The conditions for it have happened at least once and with the vast size and age of the Universe it is bordering on statistically impossible that it doesn't exist or hasn't existed somewhere else at some point.

Now, if intelligent life is common, Fermi's paradox would seem to come into play because we have not been contacted yet. Realistically, however, we've made our presence known for such a short period of time (by broadcasting waves into space) that it's unlikely to expect a response yet.

If intelligent life is uncommon, though, it's next to impossible to ever encounter it again due to the incomprehensibly vast size of the universe.

At the same time, it's possible that ancestors of humanity have been contacted by alien races. Any sufficiently advanced technology would seem indistinguishable from magic or divinity. That's kind of useless conjecture, however.

[SebC]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

Relatively speaking though, the universe is almost completely empty space.

Whilst true, this is also true of every atom in your body. Doesn't mean there's nothing there.

[stang]

Well Bump.

I was watching Unsolved Mysteries ( couldnt believe the show is still on) the other day and it had the 1991 Mexico eclipse sightings (where people 100 miles apart filmed the same thing) pretty weird stuff.

What if aliens are so far advanced that when they come here they dont even try and contact us... they maybe pass by or stop to screw with us a little? Like we dont try and comunicate with ants... we just for the most part ignore them, sometimes step on one, sometimes fry one with a magnifying glass... then the other ants go running home and say... there was this big giant and all of a sudden it started getting hot.. then Johhnyant burst into smoke and fried!! Then the other aliens belittle him and say that giant do not exist!!

THat could explain sightings etc. and why we havent heard from them...

[metal_geek]

I'm not saying... I'm just saying....

Take a look at this image, and try to imagine us as being the only "life" in the universe. Most of these "stars" are not starts at all, but Galaxies, with hundreds of billions of stars in each one, with untold numbers of planets in each. You either think there is something else in that picture or you feel, very, very alone...

You can download the Full res image if you really wanna see how crazy this image is. (30+mb)
http://www.eso.org/public/outreach/p...08-fullres.jpg


Here is the article about the image.
http://www.eso.org/public/outreach/p.../pr-39-08.html

[T@T]

Originally Posted by metal_geek

I'm not saying... I'm just saying....

Take a look at this image, and try to imagine us as being the only "life" in the universe. Most of these "stars" are not starts at all, but Galaxies, with hundreds of billions of stars in each one, with untold numbers of planets in each. You either think there is something else in that picture or you feel, very, very alone...

You can download the Full res image if you really wanna see how crazy this image is. (30+mb)
http://www.eso.org/public/outreach/p...08-fullres.jpg


Here is the article about the image.
http://www.eso.org/public/outreach/p.../pr-39-08.html

As it stands most people's minds can't understand the the sheer size of the universe and they also can't understand that beings could be so far advanced to be able travel the vast distances as well.

Fish bowl syndrome

[photon]

Originally Posted by T@T

As it stands most people's minds can't understand the the sheer size of the universe and they also can't understand that beings could be so far advanced to be able travel the vast distances as well.

Fish bowl syndrome

Who are these people? I think you'd be very hard pressed to find anyone that wouldn't accept that other life forms are out there and that there's probably many that are well far advanced of us as well.

[T@T]

Originally Posted by photon

Who are these people? I think you'd be very hard pressed to find anyone that wouldn't accept that other life forms are out there and that there's probably many that are well far advanced of us as well.

There are tonnes of people who give little chance that if aliens exist they could ever reach us, Alien sceptics have used the distance problem for years and they will always use it until either our science figures it out or an Alien slaps them across the arse.

[photon]

Little chance isn't the same as no chance.

Of course the distance problem is real, in the context of our best understanding the problem may be anywhere from significant to insurmountable.

And even if we did "figure out" the distance problem that doesn't mean that makes aliens any more likely.

Live sprang up and evolved once, so it's reasonable to expect that it would do it more than once. But until we have some positive evidence that it has in fact happened then it's nothing more than speculation and hopeful thinking.

[Dartem]

Originally Posted by photon

The amount of energy required to reach even the closest stars are more than the entire planet produces or even could produce with its natural resources,

Can you site your source for this.

[metal_geek]

Originally Posted by photon

Who are these people? I think you'd be very hard pressed to find anyone that wouldn't accept that other life forms are out there and that there's probably many that are well far advanced of us as well.

I'd be willing to be that there are billions of people on this planet, be it for education, religious, or skeptic reasons, think there is no life anywhere but here.

I'm not saying they are wrong, just that people believe alot of stuff for all kinds of reasons... I just can't wait to see the reaction when we find some undeniable evidence .

[Ford Prefect]

Originally Posted by moncton golden flames

i'll answer this on behalf of Photon "since we have no proof that intelligent life exists beyond our planet, it does not and cannot exist"

There's damned little evidence intelligent life exists on this planet.

[Azure]

I'll stick with I don't know.

[Dion]

[photon]

Originally Posted by Dartem

Can you site your source for this.

It was a back of the napkin type of calculation I saw a long time ago, I guess I should have qualified that by saying "In a reasonable amount of time", meaning a ship that accelerated at something like 1G half the way there, and decelerated at 1G half the way back.

If you did something like send robots that reconstruct us at the other end, or a generational self contained ship, something like that far less energy would be required since you could just coast there over 100,000, assuming you could make something that could last that long and work at the other end.

I'll see if I can find it.

[photon]

Ok lets see, to get to the nearest star in a lifetime you need a megawatt per pound:

http://www.time.com/time/reports/v21/science/stars.html

So the question is how big a ship do you need? I guess that depends on what you are going there for... To explore? Or to colonize?

Colonize is what I had in mind, exploring would be a lot smaller.

A fully loaded 747 weighs almost a million pounds, fully assembled shuttle stack 4.5 million pounds (though most of that is fuel). If we're going to explore, could we get away with a ship between 10 and 100 times that size? We're taking all the fuel we need, all the food, everything. Recycling will be critical.

A colonization ship would be orders of magnitude higher again.

So lets say we're super efficient and it's a only 50 million pounds. That's 50 million megawatts. A nuclear reactor produces what, 500 megawatts? Wikipedia says all the earth's nuclear reactors produce 370,000 MW, so we'd need 135 times that.

And I think my weight estimate is probably really really low, if it was a generational ship or colonization ship it'd be maybe billions of pounds.

And that's just to the nearest star, if the nearest earth like planet is 10 times further...

So just one ship could eat up a significant amount of the earth's energy reserves.

The only way it's even plausible is gaining the ability to harvest energy from the sun in large amounts, or other stuff like ram jets etc..

[stang]

^^^ Thats all good and all, but what if there is stuff out there that we cant even DREAM of?

What if the laws of physics and everything we know only exist in our universe??

What if there is other life that isnt carbon based?

What if over on the planet Thundera they have figured out how put there people in suspended animation while they travel across space?

Stop looking at it from a scientific view and use your imagination a little...

[Antithesis]

But sometimes, 'what if' is no fun. You can 'what if' anything. I believe what photon is getting across is largely what you're saying - that it would take far more advanced technology either from them or us to make interstellar travel happen. At least, that's what I got from it.

[jayswin]

Originally Posted by stang

Stop looking at it from a scientific view and use your imagination a little...

haha, from reading some of Photon's posts, he doesn't seem like the kind of guy who would stop looking at things scientifically and "use his imagination".

[stang]

Originally Posted by flameswin

haha, from reading some of Photon's posts, he doesn't seem like the kind of guy who would stop looking at things scientifically and "use his imagination".

Yeah I know, but there is nothing wrong with that either.. people like that are the reason we humans know as much as we do...

But still thinking about space, and what else is out there, and what we dont know, even looking at that picture of all the stars just boogles my mind!!

[photon]

Originally Posted by flameswin

haha, from reading some of Photon's posts, he doesn't seem like the kind of guy who would stop looking at things scientifically and "use his imagination".

Excuse me? How about not assuming something about me and making the ass of yourself, that comment was quite rude and insulting.

Would you like it if I said that you can't stop imagining, have no grounding in reality and are pretty much useless in reality? No, probably not. And I wouldn't say it because I realize that trying to pretend you know someone through forum posts is a dumb thing to do.

Originally Posted by stang

^^^ Thats all good and all, but what if there is stuff out there that we cant even DREAM of?

What if the laws of physics and everything we know only exist in our universe??

What if there is other life that isnt carbon based?

What if over on the planet Thundera they have figured out how put there people in suspended animation while they travel across space?

Stop looking at it from a scientific view and use your imagination a little...

One of my favorite quotes is this one:
"Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine; it is stranger than we can imagine." - Sir Arthur Eddington

Trust me, I have no lack of imagination. I just think that the actual reality that we understand has so much majesty and beauty and unfathomnableness that what's the point of making stuff up to wonder over?

Of course I don't think our understanding comes close to reality. But having a discussion around magic and make believe isn't very interesting.

I could have said "I look forward to the day when we can hook up our chariots to the astral unicorns and they can project us to the stars." Um, yeah, that makes for great discussions

Do I think we'll reach the stars? I do, science fiction is my favorite genre of fiction. And we'll probably do it in a way that looks radically different than anything we imagine; just look back to how they viewed space travel 100 years ago. I was just making the point that from our current level of things it's pretty much impossible.