Questions about the ET/UFO thing

a reply to: JadeStar

Life is almost certain to exist elsewhere in the M.Way galaxy, but I don't know of any 'scientific consensus' that intelligence is 'certain' to exist, but I might be willing to concede that.

What about:

1. Sentience (future sense of self)?
2. Mobility and technology? (i.e. not a dolphin-based sentience which can't get out of the water?)
3. Ability to build complex machines?
4. Ability to get into Space (low orbit)?
5. Ability to visit local planets within their SS?
6. Ability to develop inertia-less drives (i.e. can 'fly straight there' and not have to do slingshot flight paths)?
7. Ability to LEAVE their Tropopause, Heliopause? (Evidence is piling up the it is going to be VERY HARD to break through tht Heliopause.
8. Ability to fly freely though their local cluster (Kardashev Scale Type II plus?

ALL of those and MORE have to happen before they can come here.

Just sayin'...

originally posted by: Maverick7
ALL of those and MORE have to happen before they can come here.

And they have to be cognitively similar to us for it to be of any value to us. They need to perceive time in roughly the same way we do. They need to interact through a portion of the EM spectrum the way we do, and not in some other spectrum in a different dimension that we have no clue about (PSI spectrum?). They need to understand mortality and how it's possible for us to live as separate entities for a brief period and die, unlike a slime mold or crystal lattice that could live a million years or so.

All these things. And the more variables you add, the less likely the chance of worthwhile contact.

a reply to: Pitou

Just listen to some coast to coast episodes (that are relevant) on UFO's/ET's and you will know that the government has covered up the truth. The abduction ones are especially interesting.



Real picture from the "White House" UFO incident.......which lasted days........

originally posted by: Maverick7
a reply to: JadeStar

Life is almost certain to exist elsewhere in the M.Way galaxy, but I don't know of any 'scientific consensus' that intelligence is 'certain' to exist, but I might be willing to concede that.

There are currently two schools of thought on the evolution of intelligence.

One is that it is ubiquitous and eventually happens as a response to environmental stress and to outwit potential predators.

In support of this view is that cetaceans (Dolphins, Wales, Porpoise) are intelligent as are primates. Intelligence is defined here as having a language, passing on information from generation to generation, etc.

The other school of thought is that intelligence may be common but technological intelligence (species who create technology) is rare.

That last school of thought is under stress from new discoveries about life on our own planet. For instance it has been observed that some primates use crude tools and teach how to use them. ie: a stick to get at some sort of food.

That indicates that intelligence may not be as rare as we think but that given a specific set of circumstances, it, like life, naturally evolves.

originally posted by: Maverick7
a reply to: JadeStar


What about:

1. Sentience (future sense of self)?

Some indications are that some primates as well as dolphins have this.

2. Mobility and technology? (i.e. not a dolphin-based sentience which can't get out of the water?)

Ants individually can not do much but as part of a collective they can build some very large (by their scale) structures which serve their purposes. Is this technology? How would you define technology?

3. Ability to build complex machines?

This is just an extension of technology.

4. Ability to get into Space (low orbit)?

Has nothing to do with being a technological species. One can imagine plenty of technological species who rather than develop space travel instead develop more and more complex telescopes in order to study the universe.

5. Ability to visit local planets within their SS?

See answer to #4.

6. Ability to develop inertia-less drives (i.e. can 'fly straight there' and not have to do slingshot flight paths)?

Interstellar travel does not require inertia-less drives.

7. Ability to LEAVE their Tropopause, Heliopause? (Evidence is piling up the it is going to be VERY HARD to break through tht Heliopause.

This is utter nonsense. Where did you read that?

8. Ability to fly freely though their local cluster (Kardashev Scale Type II plus?)

ET does not need to do any of that to be intelligent and detectable.

ALL of those and MORE have to happen before they can come here.

We could go to Alpha Centauri with our level of technology today. It wouldn't be quick nor cheap but it is possible.

I am not someone who believes that UFOs represent alien technology. I do however know enough to know that visitation is not impossible, just highly unlikely for a ton of very good reasons (some of which you've outlined).

The Drake Equation does not have ANYTHING to do with visitation. It has to do with the DETECTABILITY of other intelligences or civilizations out there.

I always cringe when I see it brought up in the context of UFOs because it has little to do with the subject.

So long story short:

ET probably exists and our Galaxy might have several thousand species which are technological but due to the vast distances between them, it may be highly unlikely that visits occur.

a reply to: JadeStar

You're jumping back and forth and cherry picking. The basic premise is NOT that there are non-Earth sentient beings ANYWHERE in the Multiverse or Universe.

The question is about UFOs and whether the ET Hypothesis is in any way credible (that full-sized alien beings can, would, could, are flying around our airspace or LEO).

Ants, dolphins, looking through telescopes. It's not germane to the idea of intelligently controlled non-terrestrial crafts, or visits.

AND the heliopause as a barrier? Funny how you put that 'UTTER NONSENSE...(where did you read that)'. Worried, huh? Google it. It's not just bow shock radiation and energy, it's a barrier through which a rather flimsy craft must pass before getting too far from the Sun...yes, just -another- barrier to go with the cold, near-vacuum, vast distances, radiation, time-synch, and micro-meteorite bombardment, not to mention isolation and dangers of equipment failure.

The PERFECT quarantine.

It would perhaps be more appropriate to end the last sentence of your post with in "my opinion/imo".That way you'd be less likely to come across as an insufferable know-it-all.I also forget,occasionally,to add "imo" to the end of a statement.Always better to add the imo,especially on subject matter like aliens/ufo's.Just saying,you could'nt possibly have all the knowledge,of all things,all of life and it's mysteries.Therefore on a subject like this,it really is only your opinion that it's "all in people's minds"

I have had many ufo sightings here in Africa,and some of those were witnessed by my husband and some of my children also.It is,however,perfectly understandable that you are sceptical,if you have not had many,or even one such sighting.To my family,who have had these experiences,ufo's are a cold hard fact(what/whence ever their source) It is extremely offensive to have someone who obviously Not had any sightings,make a statement that it's "all in people's minds".That IS your Opinion ONLY,of that I can assure you,as can my family members.a reply to: AgentShillington

originally posted by: Maverick7
a reply to: JadeStar

You're jumping back and forth and cherry picking. The basic premise is NOT that there are non-Earth sentient beings ANYWHERE in the Multiverse or Universe.

I suggest you re-read the first post of this thread. It refers to "in proximity"

One would think that in the Universe or Multiverse being in our little Galaxy (which is actually quite massive by human scale) is "in proximity.

Here, I will quote the OP:

originally posted by: Pitou
Despite being open to it, some things about the UFO/ET thing make me think it's unlikely they exist in the real world. At this point I don't think ETs exist in our proximity...

Bolded for emphasis...

My responses were in response to that.

Once again, many are stuck on a far too human perspective, with our very short life spans and inability, as a society, to think much beyond a decade or two on anything when it comes to setting priorities and devoting resources.

Other species could be millions or even a billion plus years older and more advanced than us. Human medicine can already imagine breakthroughs in anti-aging science that might double the useful lifespan of humans with in a century. We may have the ability to preserve consciousness in artificial brains with in a couple centuries. If we escape the potential pitfalls of advanced A.I., we can start to imagine planetary initiatives that could manage projects over hundred or thousands (or millions) of years.

It seems very likely to me that most far advanced species do indeed operate on initiatives on the time scale of centuries and millennial. The point being that even if FTL equivalent technologies are absolutely impossible, it is still an almost certainty that the Galaxy is well populated by species that have set up programs of successful, ongoing colonization.

I personally think that there are enough "loopholes" in our current math that allow ways of overcoming light speed based limits on travel time that it's foolish to assume no species have evolved such technology, even if we have trouble imagining us developing it here for possibly several centuries. The easier interstellar travel over vast distances, the more likely for there to have been visitations by ETs to Earth and the larger the potential number of species that might be currently visiting us. However, even if there was a practical speed limit of 1/2 light speed for the average intergalactic species, that still would allow ample opportunity for visitation here by advanced civilizations with very long term programs for colonization and exploration.

Now, we are in a less dense area of the Milky Way. That does have an effect on the number of habitable planets with in X light years of Sol and the possibility that intelligent life has evolved "near by". Given the time scale of the galaxy and the potential of civilizations that have been steadily exploring/colonizing for possible millions of years, there is still ample opportunity for them to have visited here.

Local stellar density likely also effects the chances of an intelligent species becoming intergalactic. At our phase of technology, traveling to nearby stars seems like an undertaking of such a long term scope that we are forced to maintain a focus on traveling much closer to home. Just as one can definitely imagine we would have been more driven to send man to Mars if it was a currently inhabitable planet with abundant life, it's also clear that a civilization that has evolved in a more dense area of the habitable zone of the Galaxy, with a handful of stars with a light year and some with habitable planets orbiting them would make getting there a much higher priority.

We just aren't in the best neighborhood for the development of interstellar travel, especially since we are an incredibly short sighted species to begin with. Just another reason to be extremely wary of trying to determine what might be practical or feasible for other species based on human-centric thinking.

It's extremely likely that we are still near the extremely low end of the scale of technology and science vs. other intelligent species in our galaxy. Trying to limit them in our minds to what we can imagine ourselves being capable of in a century or two is ludicrous.

One thing that really should be a bigger part of these discussions is the Fermi Paradox. Basically, the idea that "they" should already be here and since they appear (to many) not to be here, why aren't they? Or course, this also raises an additional paradox, since the odds are heavily in favor of them "being here", why do so many try to abuse Occam's Razor by demanding that any number of highly improbable explanations for the UFO phenomena are still a simpler solution than the possibility that ET life is here?

There is also the paradox related to the prevalence of intelligent, technological species in the galaxy. Many skeptics in one breath will state that intelligent life is likely extremely rare, then in the next wonder why a space faring species, if one does exist with in range of Earth, would ever want to visit here! You can't have it both ways.

What about the opposite? What if there are tons of space faring species out there? Well, that might make our existence among many seem routine and even insignificant, but why would we assume that other species would be any less interested in cataloging and visiting the multitudes of inhabited worlds as we are in cataloging the multitudes of locations, environments and life forms, (advanced and primitive), on our own Planet?

One almost has to assume a galaxy were Humanity and Earth represent a one in a billion chance of a star system hosting intelligent life for visitation to be less than likely, given the time scales involved and the number of star systems in our galaxy. Verifying even a single intelligent extra-terrestrial civilization with in a detectable range of Earth will pretty much shatter the one in a billion assumption required to pretend that visitation is actually not likely.

As to number of species that could be visiting us, I admit that my first reaction to the possibility of dozens or hundreds was one of incredulity. However, eventually I realized that reaction was based in part on fear and in part in Earth centric thinking. It's uncomfortable to imagine eve one or two more advanced species visiting us. Not only for the implications it has of our actual spot in some Galactic pecking order and our potential insignificance as a species, but the vulnerability of being at the mercy of more advanced civilizations, given how encounters between more and less advanced cultures have played out on Earth.

Thinking about the possibility of dozens or hundreds of species visiting our planet, either currently or over the course of Earth's history, is overwhelming even for someone who tries to maintain an open mind. That it is overwhelming and uncomfortable to consider doesn't make the notion absurd, even though we might want to consider it so since laughing it off is better than actually giving it solid consideration. However, if you start to plug the most optimistic numbers into the Drake Equation and alter the "detectible period of a civilization" variable to instead represent "existing, whether we have any chance of detecting them or not", the possibility of dozens or hundreds of species visiting us doesn't seem as silly after all.

For comfort sake, I try to hope and assume it's fewer, rather than greater, a number, but I realized that what's more comfortable for me to consider has no bearing on actual reality.

originally posted by: JadeStar
So long story short:

ET probably exists and our Galaxy might have several thousand species which are technological but due to the vast distances between them, it may be highly unlikely that visits occur.

I'd respond that that is only true assuming the realities of current or near term technological and cultural limitations of the Earth apply to most or all other species.

Three factors come into play:

1. The speed, safety and easy of interstellar travel a species possesses.
2. The time that a species is willing to devote to traveling to other star systems.
3. The resources a civilization is willing/able to devote to traveling to other star systems.

I don't want to expand the debate to far, but let me touch on a few considerations that play into the above.

First, all intelligent species able to develop technology and study the universe will all eventually realize that the survival of their species depends on colonizing other star systems. Whether it's the predictable, eventual flare out of their star, natural or "man-made" disaster or warfare, the only way for a species to survive an extinction level event is to have colonies outside the range of destruction.

Second, large scale efforts at colonization are likely to be very resource intensive. There is likely to be a tipping point for each civilization at which if they fail to make the next leap before necessary resources are depleted, making the next leap, with out assistance, may be completely impossible.

Third, no matter how safe and fast travel becomes, colonization of other star systems will be a massive affair requiring that a civilization have the ability to think at time scales of centuries or millennia and have systems in place to support such projects.

Those that succeed will live on, those that fail will cease to exist as a species.

For civilizations to be capable of interstellar exploration and colonization, they have to be operating on very long time scales that are hard for us, in our current self centered, short term thinking societies, to relate to or even consider. Just because we have trouble imagining humanity making such a shift to such long term thinking doesn't mean that there aren't many civilizations in our galaxy currently successfully working on very long term time scales.

In fact, that shift in thinking may be necessary for a civilization to deal with even earlier, self inflicted threats to their continued existence. That we still have very real concerns that we might destroy ourselves with terrible weapons, or destroy the eco-sphere that we rely on because short term profit trumps long term livability of the planet, doesn't mean that the threat of self destruction is very common.

We want to think of ourselves as at least being "average" as a species and a civilization during the early centuries of the boom in technology and knowledge, but it's very possible we are really near the bottom of the bell curve when in comes to species-wide metrics of culture, intelligence, collective awareness, spirituality, love and respect for others.

Though it might seem fair to add an 'imo' there are some facts that are known.

Are there 'outlier' possibilities? Sure - the whole 'The Universe(s) are not only stranger than you can imagine, they're also stranger than you CAN imagine'.

Could we be of a holographic nature? Could the reason Quantum Theory can't be reconciled with General Relativity is that they are two different things? Perhaps QT is the nature of the 'Screen' and GR is the supported 'Image' or holographic projection.

Could the 'aliens' we seem to see be things projected into a person's mind? That might explain Vallee's 'Jealous Phenomenon'.

Could mass sightings be mass-mind-projections? Sure.

But if we are looking for the Occam's Razor most-likely-scenario, or ranking the explanations as to the possibility index, then hoaxes, military psy-ops, misidentifications and cultural biases rank among the top picks.

Fairies, elves, non-terrestrial creatures, cryptoids, holographic projections from 5th dimensional beings rank among the bottom picks.

They are all possible, but why start with the -most unlikely-? It's our need for the odd, the new, the strange the captivating idea.

Coming across as a/an 'insufferably know-it-all' (IKIA) is really a product of the reader not the poster. But how about we agree that anything is possible and we can just end this thread as useless speculation?

One reason a person might come across as an IKIA is if that person has been reading, studying, researching this topic for 40 years and they're fed up with new agers and hoaxers and all the 'we found it' news only to discover it was someone having us on? After a while, bombarded with nonsense, you realize it's just mind candy, and, at most cultural bias, or bleed over from media (i.e. science fiction).

HTH; IMO

PS
Here's an example of the possibly hostile barriers to leaving our Solar System by manned craft:

images.gizmag.com...

NASA now thinks the HP might be more 'porous' but there's only one data point and it's an estimate from an unmanned craft.

Here's a small example of why a 'want-to-believer' might turn into a near militant skeptic:

UFO researcher admits ties to CIA (Maccabee)

CIA admits to using 'UFO' as a cover story to disguise AT flights (Google has dozens of hits one from their own webpage )

Hill abduction likely a psy-op out of Pease AFB

1989 USSR Voronezh sighting due to mis-identification of scorches made by burning hay bales. (the story of the decade at the time)

Several top Roswell 'witnesses' lying, fabricating, including Glen Dennis, Marcel like to tell 'stories'.

Moore likely to have faked and planted onion skin MJ-12 documents (Moore admitted the possibility that he wasn't truthful at a UFO conference

Add to this:
o the Corso book (another story teller);
o Gulf Breeze author now outed as a fabricator;
o Belgian UFO triangle hoaxer comes forward.
o Whitley Strieber likely creating a cult-like following to sell books...One could go on and on;
o The Aviary hoax (TV's UFO Coverup Live - 1988)

And those who see a 'light in the sky' and that -automatically- equates not only to 'craft' but also 'craft under intelligent control' (IC), and then immediately to 'IC by non-terrestrials' as a 'given'. Not only silly, waste of time, but also confounds attempts to really understand what's happening (or what's not happening).

I have been looking at the scientific arguments presented here-but admittedly I am not a "scientific type" so I don't understand all of it.My genius is creative,unfortunately not mathematical of scientific.A pity,though I don't turn my nose up at creativity,if the S ever had to HTF,I would be most useful.

Now,what I want to get at is this-from what I could gather so far,there would apparently be obstacles to ET travelling here,am I correct in what I got from what some of you stated? Not being quarrelsome,just wanting to know if I understood correctly.Because if I did-something/one must have gotten round some obstacles.There are some mighty strange and mindboggling things flying around the skies of Mpumalanga Province in South Africa.The husband,who Is a more mathematical,scientific type,a very levelheaded,pragmatic man,has witnessed some of these sighting with me.All 3 of our children,seperately, has witnessed a ufo with us,on one or the other occasion.

If it is impossible for ET to come here,that means 2 things-either they have Been here all along(and so don't have to get around Heliodome things+Fermi paradoxes etc(sorry I am a blithering idiot when it comes to scientific terms+science in general:-D) OR these are earthly factions with tech Wayyy beyond what we can imagine.

Now I may have misunderstood,do correct me if I'm wrong,I skimmed over the science info+gathered from it that that "physics is a bitch" basically,and it may not be possible for ET to come here on a whim as they please,any ol' time of the day+seven times on a Sunday.But Something(s) IS here,that is for my family,the undeniable,in-your-face Fact.I have a thread on here,about one particular sighting that the husband and I had together-and he said in his opinion,there is no known earthly crafts that can perform those maneouvres,and at that hyperspeed-but then he is not privy to the classified deep black programmes,and the info+revelations such would bring.

Ufo's flying around the sky in the province where we live? Most assuredly,and spectacular sightings along with it.Whether it's ET or not,there is no telling.But who/what ever has the ability to build crafts that could perform the maneouvres and at the speeds we witnessed is more advanced technologically than what we can easily imagine.

I am an abductee,but that's a whole other kettle of fish-ufo's are only the tip of the iceberg for me personally,anyway.Fascinating tip,though-because the answer as to their origin may just provide me with the answer to so many questions I have about my whole life.I highly doubt,imo,that the sightings we have had are all from the same point of origin,which muddies the water even more.I've pretty much reconciled myself to never getting the answers I seek,to any of my questions.

a reply to: Raxoxane

Would you agree that there's at least a 50-50 chance that an 'abduction experience' (ruling out all hoaxers for the moment) is completely inside the mind of the experiencer - IOW no external validation?

Even so, 'having an experience' is not evidence of proof of the ET hypothesis, let alone proof. Is it impossible that non-terrestrial beings are coming here, abducting people and returning them to their bedrooms? I guess not completely impossible, but way, way down at the bottom of the list of probable explanations.

In your abduction, did they leave you any artefacts? (Just wondering).

Stories of sightings, no matter how credible the witness is still just a story. (i.e. ths Surgeon's photo of the Loch Ness Monster. A Medical Doctor lying, making a hoax? Yep).

originally posted by: Totemic
One thing that really should be a bigger part of these discussions is the Fermi Paradox. Basically, the idea that "they" should already be here and since they appear (to many) not to be here, why aren't they? Or course, this also raises an additional paradox, since the odds are heavily in favor of them "being here", why do so many try to abuse Occam's Razor by demanding that any number of highly improbable explanations for the UFO phenomena are still a simpler solution than the possibility that ET life is here?

FIrst off, I just wanted to tell you that your posts on this subject are wonderful and show a depth of knowledge and critical thinking so often missing from this subject. I agree with much of what you said there as you have raised very important points of study/debate.

Here's another one I would like to add.

Alien machines may be too small for us to have noticed.

One area I am very interested in, and an area I think may hold the key to answering the Fermi Paradox is nanometer scale technology or nanotechnology or nanotech for short.

There is a very good reason to suspect that we will continue to shrink our technology. The advantage of this to interstellar travel is that it takes far less energy to accelerate something smaller than the width of a human hair to near the speed of light than a massive starship or even something the size of the Voyager probes.

In less than 50 years we have gone from satellites and probes that were the size of a small car, to the size of a refrigerator so "cube sats" based on the same technology that's in smart phones.

There is every reason to believe we will continue to reduce the size of this stuff and we have in fact already constructed workable machines at the nano scale:



Also a species could send out these little probes in all directions as "smart dust" setting up a whole network of communication between the stars as these nanomachines work together in a sort of hive mind.

Individually one may be very simple, an a sensor array and a communicator.

Together they become an ever expanding sphere of detailed observers, and perhaps even influencers.

How cool is that!?

I've said this before, we have only just begun exploring this scale of space. There could be alien nano machines crawling on your monitor right now as you read this and you would not see them. They would only be detectable through very carefully looking with highly specified instruments as they would be too small to see with a magnifying glass or optical microscope.

So, the answer to the Fermi Paradox may be that we're actually surrounded. The Earth may at this moment be home to a billion alien nanomachines and if you put them all together they would fit on the surface of a penny yet their density on Earth would be so thin, even at 1 billion that it would be highly unlikely one ever was seen by a tunneling electron microscope!

originally posted by: Maverick7
a reply to: Raxoxane

Would you agree that there's at least a 50-50 chance that an 'abduction experience' (ruling out all hoaxers for the moment) is completely inside the mind of the experiencer - IOW no external validation?

Even so, 'having an experience' is not evidence of proof of the ET hypothesis, let alone proof. Is it impossible that non-terrestrial beings are coming here, abducting people and returning them to their bedrooms? I guess not completely impossible, but way, way down at the bottom of the list of probable explanations.

In your abduction, did they leave you any artefacts? (Just wondering).

Stories of sightings, no matter how credible the witness is still just a story. (i.e. ths Surgeon's photo of the Loch Ness Monster. A Medical Doctor lying, making a hoax? Yep).

My big issue with those who claim to be abducted is that the abductors seem to give them nothing in the way of physical evidence which can be tested, nor in most stories do we learn any new information about the galaxy we presumably share which can be scientifically tested.

The lack of that concrete, testable evidence leaves me and many others to just discount the whole thing as false memory syndrome, wishful thinking or overactive interpretation of dreams.