POLL: UFO's, Aliens, and people from New Jersey...

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Maybe they were just the last creations on THIS planet!

Anyway, this topic I started is not going the way I thought it would. It's interesting that the opinions are split on whether or not we've been visited. my thoughts on the matter...

Since Earth is teeming with life, plus one planet in ten in our solar system supports life...Why can't there be other planets with intelligent life on it. The universe is OLD and there are gazillions of planets and stars!! It stands to reason that there may be other inhabited planets with civilizations that are further along than others, and may even be able to travel to other solar systems.

With that said, I definitely think there is life "out there!" They may have even visited in the past, maybe even now...It would be cool to think they're still around, but you never know. I personally don't think aliens are living among us...But I think we've been visited.

 

Yes!!
There is life on other planets and i am living proof!!

 

Microorganisms on Mars??!!? I missed this development. When did we discover this?

 

I would expect that there is intelligent life out there, which is proven by its reluctance to contact us.

Forget which comedian it was, but one of them had a schtick about how we are the Jehovah's Witnesses of the universe, sending out the radio-wave equivalent of "Hi there, can we speak to you a moment about the afterlife?" Interplanetary spam, as it were.

 

Nutrimat, back in the Middle Ages, people believed the Earth was the center of the universe because the strongest institution, the Catholic Church, taught that. There is no strong institution that teaches that UFOs exist. Rather, there have been different and varied claims of UFOs sightings/encounters. That's not to say there are UFOs, but I'd say that it makes it easier to believe that aliens are out there.

 

Shralp - Microorganisms were found on a rock fragment a few years ago.

As for the star trek view...It may be far fetched, but the Vulcan chick on "Enterprise" is a hottie!

 

Hrmph I am annoyed that I seem to share the popular belief in this thread
But as almost everyone has said, there are an infinite -1 number of planets so basicly almost anything should exist. Perhaps even life that is so alien to us that we woulndt see it as life? Nor they us. Like the strange creatures Adams described as living in Jupiter.

 

It's difficult to say, because of course we don't know what constitutes life, so it's very hard to pin down the factors which make life possible. We can make things easier, however, by looking at how life can be possible for us, and assume that other life forms will need similar conditions. So, we need a stable star which won't alternately freeze and scald a developing world. We need a planet circling that star which is sufficiently large to hold an atmosphere, but not too large that gravity prevents development of life from simple molecules. The orbit of this planet must be at the right distance from the star (not too hot, not too cold) and must be pretty much circular. A comet impact may be needed to seed the planet with the requisite molecules, depending on your theories for how life arose.
I'm sure there are many other criteria, but the chances of a given planet fulfilling these are very small. However, we now know that there are very many planets in the galaxy, at least based on our current surveying, so the odds, while poor, still leave very many planets which could develop earth-based life. The universe is not infinite, but it still contains a mind-bogglingly huge number of stars, and very many of these could theoretically develop life.
The next question is whether we could meet another intelligent life form. If Einstein is correct, we will never meet anyone from any but the closest stars. Maybe he is not. Another factor to consider, however, is the age of our technological civilization against that of the universe - we've had radio for 100 years, against an age of the universe of 15000000000 years; that's quite a difference, we really are a mayfly on the scale of the universe. The chances of two alien races being on anywhere near a comparable scale of development are minutely small, and TV series such as Star Trek, while fun, are probably wrong in their portrayal of different races.
Of course, I'd much prefer it if there were people out there to contact!

 

Imagine if there's another planet out there, using a little thing they call the "Outernet", chatting on a Forum called the Boards O' Magic and talking about Alien life on other places except Grogranessgrogarkarlorn. Freaky thought...though probably not impossible.

 

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...

Uh Uh Utinni!

 

Ok. First of
Speed of Universe expansion. Why haven't someone mentioned Hubble telescope yet? one of its primary objectives was to measure the expansion of the universe. Since everything expands next to everything in the universe we can't talk about speed of expansion. Our galaxy expands at a different speed next to our neighbor galaxy than to a more distant galaxy. Instead of speed we use a unit speed. kilometers per second per megaparsec. Anyone interested in more can find plenty of info on the net. I won't rant more about it here.

Second.
Intelligent Life on other planets. The data from Hubble telescope estimated the age of the universe to 12 billion years. Life on earth spend 5 billion years to evolve to a state where the life form is able to travel the outer space. We'll probably be gone in a million or much less years. So it is unlikely that all/many intelligent lifeforms live at the same time, Like Taluntain and Maldir said. Further; unless we discover more (more as they are actually found) about wormholes and also about quantum movement, we'll never get far in the vast universe. If we just travelled by the speed of light it would take hundreds of human generations to find other solar systems likely to hold life forms. So I doubt anyone will visit us. Perhaps someone has been around earth in the 5 billion years. Who knows. Black holes can warp space so who knows what wormholes can be used for, or rather could've been used for.

Third.
Lifeforms can exist in sulfur environments at much more than 300 degrees-F here on earth. Just look into the phenomenal life of organisms near chimneys deep in our oceans. Its so weird if those absurd environments can hold life, and you don't think the billions of billions star systems don't hold any kind of life. To get an idea of how many stars there are in the universe we must go to equator and count every inch around the globe. We'll have to walk around earth more than a billion times to add enough inches together to get an equal number as big as the number of stars in the universe. Get a picture of the big number?
Just try and count the number of inches from you and down to work once. That is just a drop in the ocean. Literally, there are as many stars as if you take a glass and try and empty all the oceans, and count the number of times you have to pour a glass of water.

fourth.
Evolution a lucky punch?. We only have a few handful of planets to look at. one of them has intelligent life. Earth. Although Hubble can see far, it can't observe in details which star systems have planets with life and which don't. We are limited to guessing how unlikely our evolution is. Perhaps life evolves easily? After all we are products of something simple and chemically structured.

I hope you had the patience to read this. It got rather long.

[ October 02, 2002, 19:55: Message edited by: Nobleman ]

 

There are a few reasons why aliens havent landed here yet

1. There are no aliens, God created only life on this rock and nothing else (For my opinion on this, I´m agnostic so I´ll just stick to the next reasons

2. There already here, watching us like were in Big Brother or something. Running our lives our governments and our industrys to prepare us for capture (Talk about paranoia)

3. Theyre just waiting, theyre patient/lazy
to wait till we killed ourselves

4. They dont wanna come here, cant blame them for that

5. There didnt advance enough to start colonizing other planets
Big reason for this are GRB (Gamma Ray Burst) who appear once every few hundreds years. The cool/nasty part of these burst is that in a few seconds they produce more energy then the entire universe, causing the sterilisation of an entire starsystem (In other words, if one would happen near Alpha Centauri, all life including humankind and "aliens" in the other thousand solarsystems in this starsystem would be eradicated)
There is no telling when or where the next one will be, maybe in this starsystem causing every human to die.

So uhm, sleep wel tonight.
hehehe

 

Tal, at least one person was interested!
I remember reading about this in the newspapers at the time. I also (vaguely) remember the "martian life rocks" being debunked some time afterwards. Wasn't it a miscalculation or evidence of normal, explainable radiation or something along those lines?

Nobleman,
1) I am not a scientist, or a mathmetician so I don't really have anything to add to this. I wouldn't know the calculations for the expansion of the universe from the THAC0 formulae.

2)I suppose that, yes it's possible. But to say I believe in something just because it is vaguely possible is ridiculous.

3) Yes, there are some truly strange creatures out there, and they can survive in (relatively) harsh environments. That doesn't change the fact that life has some basic temperature, atmosphere, food source, and other requirements. And every other planet out there (so far) has an environment far more hostile than ours. Would you say that any of the planets in our own system are capable of supporting life (other than possibly Mars)? Other planets out there that we've discovered so far are even more unlikely! The Earth and, in fact, our whole solar system, is far, far, from "typical". To date NONE of the planets we have discovered are capable of even being close to supporting life. The planets are way too hot (very close to a star), way too cold (very far from a star), or the gravity would be so great that anything on it would be pancaked in a split second, or the planet's revolution around its star is too eratic to provide a consistent temperature, or the surface is not solid, or the planet is bombarded by meteorites, etc.

4) Almost every scientist I know of would disagree with you on this point (that life could evolve easily). We are products of something simple and chemically structured? At the most basic level, yes. EVERYTHING is simple if you break it down far enough. But we are far from simple creatures, as are most animals and plants. For life to survive to the point where it can sit there and have these kind of debates is highly improbable.

I would love for us to meet a member of an intelligent species that evolved on another planet independently of us. Such a meeting between the two species would undoubtedly be a monumental event in our history, and provide us with a wealth of knowledge. Even the dicovery of thier existence (arifacts, etc) would greatly alter our theories and beliefs about ourselves.

BUT
1) There is no evidence in the known universe of any form of intelligent life (other than us, and our intelligence is questionable ), nor evidence of any planet that COULD support life other than Earth.
2) The probability of finding another species (if they existed) is extremely low, given the vast area to search in.
3) There is no evidence (other than mentally deficient conspiracy theorists) that any extraterrestrial life has ever visited this planet. I don't beleive in the US government covering up evidence either, as I think our government is too stupid and incompetent (as a whole) to keep a secret this big for any length of time. Someone would have leaked it (with clear and convincing evidence).

Therefore, I do not believe in aliens, although I acknowledge the (very remote) possibility.

[ October 02, 2002, 23:49: Message edited by: Nutrimat ]

 

VERY INTERESTING STORIES:

Here is a copy of a speech about UFOs I once did:

What the most important scientific issue there ever was? I know the answer. You’ve probably wondered about it some point in your life too. It is as distant as it is familiar. It is the height of mankind’s fear, and the collection of all his hope. So what is it? None other than the UFO - I don’t mean unleaded fuel only. From the US to Australia, from flying disks to moving cigars, from the days of the pharaohs to the height of the Cold War, these UFOs, whether a fabrication of the mind, or a true reality, never seem to leave us alone, proving that something not in the norm is out there. Today, I will explain to you the strangest encounters with UFOs, and then tell you about the different theories developed that attempt to explain UFOs so you can conclude for yourself whether they are pure fact or mere fiction.
The culture society has developed revolving around these mysterious, maybe malevolent but certainly magnificent unidentified flying objects is based almost completely on UFO sightings and accounts of those who claim to have been abducted by extraterrestrial beings. Although sightings prior to the 1950s occurred, the ones during this era were the best documented. One of the most bizarre cases involves the Brazilian farmer Antonio Villas Boas, who was plowing a field after midnight on a day in 1957. A hovering vehicle approached his field, stopped his tractor, and four beings pulled him aboard. Inside, he was seduced by a beautiful female, appearing to be human. It gives a whole new meaning to rape. The next encounter is about just as strange in 1961, Barney and Betty Hill, driving home from a vacation, were racing along the Canadian border when an spaceship caught up to them. The next thing they remembered, they were driving two hours later on a location miles away. Finally, on a more tragic note, in 1975, Frederick Valentich took off on an air base near New Zealand alone when he reported seeing a strange object hover above him. With that, he signed off and was never heard from again. The remains of his aircraft were never found. A very close encounter with the fourth kind came in the late 1880s, when in a cave in Banjos, Spain, a boy and a girl with green skin suddenly appeared. They could not speak Spanish when they had just arrived, but later when they learned it, authorities discovered that they were from a sunless world and a storm was the last thing they encountered before arriving at Earth. These things are strange, but could be true.
Many theories have been developed to explain these strange UFOs. Carl Jung was a prominent figure in ufology. He reasoned that UFOs were symbols of all the things man feared. For example, the characteristic round shape of UFOs represented uncertainty while the large bulbous eyes of aliens sometimes described almost appear to be skeletons – we’re all afraid of those, right? Jacque Vallee, like Jung, drew up conclusions about UFOs also. Vallee said that man fears greatly, so encounters with strange beings may be figments of imagination. Vallee argues UFOs represent a fear, a scared subconscious of man.
In summary, huge number of records of UFOs still remain mysteries. This is not something to be ignored. Whether UFOs are completely real or the fabrication of a scared subconscious, they are truly astonishing. Feelings of impression or oppression have resulted from those who have witnessed their splendor. It is because of man’s obsession with the paranormal and unknown, that theories have been formulated for and against the existence of UFOs. Whatever the case, the experiences man has had with these extraordinary objects are simply amazing.

Ask if you want more...I'm an amateur ufologist.

 

Nutrimat I just wanted people to consider how they get an idea of the chance of life somewhere else than Earth. On one hand we have the size of the universe, on the other we have the strength of life.

Most people have to ponder a lot on the actual size of the universe to get a grasp of its enormous size, hence my two approximated examples. In addition to this, the ways of life's evolution in its pre life steps are poorly understood. How did it really occur? Does the complexity of the products match the complexity of the process? hence the second part of my previous post.

So to make a conclusion of two possibilities based on something poorly understood Vs. something hard to grasp is hardly useful to anyone. Scientist, mathematicians or thinkers.

So we can't say its vaguely possible that intelligent life has been or will come or even is somewhere else in the universe. Neither can we say that it is extremely likely that intelligent life exist. Heck we can't even conclude something in between.

[ October 10, 2002, 12:39: Message edited by: Nobleman ]