Are We Alone?

[martyp]

If you Google "space aliens in the middle ages" (or, something like that) you will find that our ancestors were visited as well.

Now we are expected to believe Google as well?

 

[FUEGO]

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence - Carl Sagan

I was going to say exactly that and attribute it to Richard Dawkins. Glad you made the statement first.

 

[UnrealizedPotential]

...


So do you believe these stories or not? You say you aren't necessarily believing in them...but then you say that all of them cannot be hoaxes (which implies that at least one is true - but that then begs the question "how do you know which wild fantasy is actually true, and which of the wild fantasies are hoaxes?")

And funny how all of these cases are in the last 50 years or so. Guess the aliens just happened to start showing up then? Or they didn't care about investigating us back in the middle ages, or earlier civilization times?

And are all of these reports about the same alien race? Do they have the same spacecraft? Or does our planet double as the intergalatic alien interchange where various alien civilizations visit us all at the same time, as I doubt all of these 'eyewitnesses' would describe the same aliens, exact same spacecraft, etc.

Suppose all of these stories are true - you want us to believe that the aliens came all that way to leave a burn mark on someone's stomach? Or to probe someone's rectum? Then turn around and disappear? No need to communicate with or probe any of the other world's 6 billion residents?

If they have a need to travel all that distance to examine us, why not communicate with us? Why these sporadic, handful of allegations? If you're going to make contact like that, why stop? And if they did want to examine us discretely, they are able to bend the fabric of space/time for their space travel - yet they can't wander around our planet without going unnoticed....except by people out in the middle of nowhere?

And let's take a quick look at just one random pick from your list:

Michelak case of 1967 in Canada

Ah, yes. An advanced alien civilization that can travel through wormholes or travel at faster than the speed of light has a spaceship with mere "blinking lights"...just like on a 1960s computer! Guess that special effects team on the 1970s Star Trek series weren't that far off with their infamous "blinking lights" that controlled the Enterprise! All you need are a few lights to turn on or off to maintain a ship traveling through wormholes. Advanced warp drives and other technological feats by alien races apparently do not accompany advanced communication display or controls technologies.

It "melted" his glove? I presume it wasn't a metallic glove, and rather a cotton or 'rough denim'-like glove. I highly doubt it dissolved the glove like a solvent would, and rather was so hot that it vaporized his glove -but at either rate, is he suggesting he had his glove partially pulled off of his hand? If he was wearing his glove like a normal person would, and if his finger was at the tip of the glove, when the glove tip dissolves/evaporates, why didn't his fingertip also evaporate? If the glove evaporated from extreme heat, then the gases would partially rise up inside his glove and burn his fingertip. If the glove 'dissolved' magically from solvents or chemical reaction, then why didn't his fingertip also meet the same fate? Or is he suggesting he somehow has a .001 second reaction time and somehow knew that his glove was 'dissolving' the absolute split second it came into contact with the UFO, so he didn't continue pushing forward with his fingertip? And if it was hot enough to incinerate his glove....wouldn't he feel the heat emanating from it before he touched it?

Oh, and funny how it dissolved his glove, yet doesn't do anything to the soil on the ground that it's sitting on.



Let me get this straight - a blast of "hot air" hit his shirt and it was so hot that it caught his outer and UNDER shirt "on fire" (and apparently left circle burns on his stomach)...yet, this same blast of hot air didn't do anything after it hit his shirt? (i.e. didn't partly deflect up and burn his face?) A story said he had 'redness' on his face...but if just air was directed at his shirt and 'caught it on fire', I would expect that air to be hot enough to actually burn his face as well.

Also - and more importantly - he describes the holes as being 1/16" diameter?!!? Do you realize what would happen if you had a series of holes that small with hot gas being pushed through it? It would diffuse similarly to one liquid being diffused through similar holes into another fluid (for visualization). In other words, the gases would slow down in velocity, and the gases themselves would spread out in shape. The alleged round circles that burned his shirt and his skin would never be caused by holes that would maintain that perfectly spherical shape - unless his shirt was touching the actual holes (which it doesn't say it was).

And what's with the "rush of air as it ascended"? An object with no 'exhaust ports' and no apparent means of combustion has a need to move air as it ascends? Funny that he never mentioned any rushing air as it DEscended in the beginning. Yes, it initially descended "160 feet away", but you would both feel and hear it similar to how it would have ascended.

So his shirt - which was just smouldering - somehow caught moss on fire? Looking at the pictures of his shirt for the cover of his book, there's no way in hell a few tiny burn circles on a cotton shirt would catch moss on fire.

Without hard evidence there will always be those who question whether something actually happened.I understand completely this thought.This does not change the possibility it could of happened or even did happen.I allready admit I have no evidence any of these cases actually happened.Yet the eyewitnesses and testimony and physical evidence is there.If you want to believe in the possibility that any one of the cases happened great.If you don't that is fine also.It is not my responsibility to prove or disprove any of this.I think it is possible.I have no problems with someone who does not think so.I afford you the right to believe what you want to without question,why am I also not afforded that same right?

 

[redduck]

Now we are expected to believe Google as well?

Well, not Google. But Google gives you links to stories (in this case alien sightings/interactions/behaviors/disgusting habits) in the Middle Ages (and previous to the Middle Ages).

But, I am a bit skeptical about some of these stories, especially the one that mentions that the aliens' favorite meal was celery with cream cheese on it. To further complicate things, there seems to be a series of sand paintings backing this claim. Interestingly enough, in the paintings, the space aliens don't appear to using their own orifices while eating. But, perhaps that's just the artist's interpretation.

 

[sengsational]

The celery sounds like maybe the aliens were the tree cats from the Honorverse!

 

[martyp]

It is not my responsibility to prove or disprove any of this.I think it is possible.I have no problems with someone who does not think so.I afford you the right to believe what you want to without question,why am I also not afforded that same right?

Of course you have a right to believe what you believe and to say so on this forum. I do believe though that the world suffers materially from this type of thinking. Take the Ebola epidemic in west Africa. Many people there believe in superstitions or don't trust government authority or science and are influenced by conspiracy theories. This goes beyond just having an opinion that might be right. In their case it could kill yourself or your neighbor.

It is easy for us to talk about aliens from another planet because there are no real consequences to what each of us believe. But how people think about these things and other issues does matter. In this country is leads people to not vaccinate their children or to believe that cell phones are giving them brain cancer or that smart meters are making them sick . . . and then there is fluoridated water . . .

Hence the relatively strong opinions on this issue here.

 

[redduck]

The celery sounds like maybe the aliens were the tree cats from the Honorverse!

Had to Google "Honorverse". Glad I learned something today.

 

[redduck]

...It is easy for us to talk about aliens from another planet because there are no real consequences to what each of us believe. ...

...
... you want us to believe that the aliens came all that way to leave a burn mark on someone's stomach? Or to probe someone's rectum? Then turn around and disappear? No need to communicate with or probe any of the other world's 6 billion residents?...
If they have a need to travel all that distance to examine us,...

Well, martyp, of course there are real consequences to what each of us believe. I mean, wouldn't it boost your self-esteem immensely if some alien came eight zillion miles and picked out your rectum to be probed over the world's remaining six billion rectums (minus one)? I bet you couldn't wipe that grin off of your face. Talk about feeling special. Isn't that an important consequence?

 

[Lucantes]

They better hurry up at the rate we're using everything, unless they find sea water of high value.

V! Humankind's Last Stand!

 

[easysurfer]

I look at the "Are we alone" question from a another angle...

Do we believe in a Deity? Angels? Ghosts? Life after death?

A lot of folks who are considered rational do believe. If those things do exist, IMO, to believe that we are not alone is not a far stretch at all.

 

[Lucantes]

Do we believe in a Deity? Angels? Ghosts? Life after death?

No. No. No. No.
Did I pass?

 

[easysurfer]

No. No. No. No.
Did I pass?

Yep. You passed. Nothing wrong with not believing either.

Like the part in "Dead Poets Society" where Keating asks his students to walk their own way, and the one student choses not to participate and Keating says that is fine. To choose not to choose, is also a choice.

Here we go:

 

[Lucantes]

Yep. Nothing wrong with not believing either.

What?!
A Voice of Reason?!
I don't know how to react to that, so I will choose FEAR!

 

[Fermion]

This thread got me reading on synthetic biology (because I was curious about the current ability or lack thereof to create artificial biological life).

They are closer than I thought. They have constructed a several million base pair DNA strand and inserted it into a cleaned out cell which "came alive" and started to replicate under command of the DNA.

Probably no more than a decade away at most from a true artificial cell.

That is probably the singularity. Someone will engineer a cell that can replicate and interface to a digital computer, sensors, and other similar cells in a known fashion. A brain made of these cells will be grown that has a much greater capacity for learning than humans. Skynet.

 

[samclem]

That is probably the singularity. Someone will engineer a cell that can replicate and interface to a digital computer, sensors, and other similar cells in a known fashion. A brain made of these cells will be grown that has a much greater capacity for learning than humans.

Nations and coalitions of nations will build competing synthetic brains to outdo each other--outbet their stock markets, outstategize their strategists. The competition will boil down to the number of neural connections, or synapses, each megabrain has. We'll try to keep up with the Russians, but it's possible they will pull ahead. We'll have a synaptic gap.

 

[scrinch]

There are a lot of common types of structures out in the universe in the billion-year timeframe that are reasonably stable following the laws of physics (both those we kind of know and those we don't). For example galaxies, stars, quasars, planets, asteroids, and comets are all types of mass agglomerations that commonly form and behave in common ways because of gravity, etc. Most evolve somewhat through time as their energy budgets change, but they are each a recognizable class of thing. I see life as just another of these stable structures...effectively self-replicating chemistry in a particular P-T-X (+ other parameters) space. Pretty much inevitable given that P-T-X-OtherParameter state, given that non-replicating chemistry comes and goes while self-replicating chemistry comes and stays. So how common is that life-as-we-know-it P-T-X-etc state? Probably not so common in percentage terms, but given the number of stars in the universe, probably pretty abundant in absolute numbers. As others have mentioned, while 3 billion years of earth history has shown that life is a stable condition, it is not yet clear whether adding intelligence increases or decreases that stability. So I have to agree with those who believe that life is abundant out there, but am not so sure whether there is much intelligence. If intelligence proves stable, there should be a lot of intelligent life. If it proves a self-destructive characteristic, then there may only be occasional brilliant flashes of it as the universe evolves.

 

[HFWR]

One would ordinarily expect the number of UFO sightings/photos to increase roughly on pace with the increasing number of cameras around, but that has not occurred...

But do aliens "twerk"?


Sent from my iPad using Early Retirement Forum

 

[donheff]

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence - Carl Sagan

I was going to say exactly that and attribute it to Richard Dawkins. Glad you made the statement first.

Actually, I used to subscribe to The Skeptical Inquirer and suspect I first saw it from another founder of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal named Marcello Truzzi whose quote was "An extraordinary claim requires extraordinary proof." But most people, including me, associate it with Sagan. Dawkins might very well have said something similar or frequently quoted Sagan or Truzzi.

 

[MichaelB]

The reason we haven't seen signs of alien presence on earth is because of the Prime Directive (here). They're here, probably all around us, just hidden so they don't interfere with our primitive society.

That, and they probably find the term "alien" offensive and are waiting for us to use a friendlier way to describe them.

 

[ls99]

Edward Teller was the first one to de-cloak.

"It was Leo Szilard, a man with an impish sense of humor, who supplied the perfect reply to the Fermi Paradox: - "They are among us," - he said, - "but they call themselves Hungarians. " "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martians_(group)

 

[Zathras]

...Since I am not 100% sure I consider that it might be true.Whether you are open to all possibilities or not is of no concern to me.I have no proof therefore I am open minded.You seem to disagree with that....

You seem much more open to the idea of intelligent aliens visiting earth than to the idea we can detect planets around other stars.

Yet we have far more direct, repeatable evidence for these planets than for intelligent life visiting earth.

 

[UnrealizedPotential]

You seem much more open to the idea of intelligent aliens visiting earth than to the idea we can detect planets around other stars.

Yet we have far more direct, repeatable evidence for these planets than for intelligent life visiting earth.

I believe our government probraly has the evidence of extraterestrial intelligence visiting Earth.Planets around other Star systems using our technology and trying to detect them requires very,very sensitive technology.It is inevitable that there are other Planets around Stars.There are just too many chances for it not to happen.However,considering that our Sun makes up 99.86% of the entire mass of our own Solar System I think one can begin to see that it is very,very difficult to get past a Stars light and look for a Planet that is certainly thousands of times smaller than its parent Sun and probraly millions of times smaller if what we know about are own Solar system is typical throughout most Solar Systems.It is impossible for me to determine which Planets they think they have found around other Stars is accurate data and which is not.Thus I have my doubts,not that such Planets exist but that what they think are Planets are actually that and the data surrounding it is accurate.I would require a better system of detection by directly observing such Planets that would verify what we think we know and actual factual data by direct observation and see if the two agree.

 

[nun]

I believe our government probraly has the evidence of extraterestrial intelligence visiting Earth.Planets around other Star systems using our technology and trying to detect them requires very,very sensitive technology.It is inevitable that there are other Planets around Stars.There are just too many chances for it not to happen.However,considering that our Sun makes up 99.86% of the entire mass of our own Solar System I think one can begin to see that it is very,very difficult to get past a Stars light and look for a Planet that is certainly thousands of times smaller than its parent Sun and probraly millions of times smaller if what we know about are own Solar system is typical throughout most Solar Systems.It is impossible for me to determine which Planets they think they have found around other Stars is accurate data and which is not.Thus I have my doubts,not that such Planets exist but that what they think are Planets are actually that and the data surrounding it is accurate.I would require a better system of detection by directly observing such Planets that would verify what we think we know and actual factual data by direct observation and see if the two agree.

The masses and orbits of planets can be derived from radial velocity measurements. If you want to observe a planet close to a star you have to use a coronagraph, to date several jupiter class exo-planets have been directly observed by the new class of 8m telescopes.

 

[UnrealizedPotential]

The masses and orbits of planets can be derived from radial velocity measurements. If you want to observe a planet close to a star you have to use a coronagraph, to date several jupiter class exo-planets have been directly observed by the new class of 8m telescopes.

I think what would be neat is if we can find a Earth size Planet around a nearby Star in the habitable zone.That would be very exciting.At first I thought of a Jupiter size Planet ,but then realized that is too gaseous to harbor life as we know it.Of course who knows under what conditions life could exist.

 

[nun]

I think what would be neat is if we can find a Earth size Planet around a nearby Star in the habitable zone.That would be very exciting.At first I thought of a Jupiter size Planet ,but then realized that is too gaseous to harbor life as we know it.Of course who knows under what conditions life could exist.

It'll be a while before we can directly observe Earth sized planets, but new IR space telescopes will push the limits.