Scientists to Congress - Aliens Exist.

a reply to: EnPassant

Well, technically, as Phoenix pointed out, pretty much any numbers plugged in without a value of zero will yield a positive result for ET intelligence. So that's the 100% sure part I think you're referring to.

I believe in them, partly because of things told to me by a service member(s) I hold the deepest respect for.

The primary reason I wanted to respond to you, was to tell you that I'm extremely jealous of your screen name.


I assume you play?

a reply to: JohnTheSmith

While one seldom hears about physical proof, I personally believe that humanity is not the only intelligent species out there. I believe!

originally posted by: Meteoritic
While one seldom hears about physical proof, I personally believe that humanity is not the only intelligent species out there. I believe!

I just wonder. What we understand to be "intelligence" is specifically linked to the kind of creatures we are and the way we perceive reality. And that is a direct result of the long trail of our development on Earth from the tiniest little creatures to the little crawling things that managed to survive the various mass extinctions. I find it very difficult to believe that anything out there would have a similar or comparable history, and therefore it's unlikely that they would be intelligent in any way that might mean anything to us.

Again, it's hard for us to imagine what aliens might be like, because we are not aliens. We tend to imagine them being like us, which is highly improbable.

Who are we, if not alien life?

a reply to: Aldrin

We are Humans , we are indigenous to this planet so by definition not Alien life.

That is some good science right there, play the numbers game, because it just has to be true.

If you play the lottery forever, will you eventually win?

Only the odds in atronomical lotto is well.. astronomical. Worth the time and money?

originally posted by: kykweer


If you play the lottery forever, will you eventually win?

Yes. Forever is a long time, and the powerball is only like 197 million to 1 if I recall. So yes, you will eventually win. In fact, if you played forever (assuming you're alluding to eternity, which is essentially just a synonym of forever) you will win the lottery, no matter how great the odds, an infinite amount of times.

originally posted by: 7918465230

originally posted by: kykweer


If you play the lottery forever, will you eventually win?

Yes. Forever is a long time, and the powerball is only like 197 million to 1 if I recall. So yes, you will eventually win. In fact, if you played forever (assuming you're alluding to eternity, which is essentially just a synonym of forever) you will win the lottery, no matter how great the odds, an infinite amount of times.

That is not the case at all.

Probability cannot become certainty.

Harte

originally posted by: JadeStar

Because the UFO 'evidence' does not support the idea that aliens are visiting us.

Seth Shostak, who i shared a lunch with once btw, has no problem with the idea that aliens could possibly come here. There just is no good evidence that it's happened.

Additionally, from a logic standpoint aliens visiting earth is just a highly unlikely thing given:

1) How vast space is. You really have no idea how vast space is. The distances between the stars are enormous and its not like interstellar travel will be a commonplace thing as shown in shows like Star Trek, for even a super advanced species.

2) There are literally billions of other Earths within our own galaxy alone. Why come to this one?

3) Anything an alien species might want to learn about us can be learned from a distance of many light years, without sending any ships. Yep, super advanced telescopes. The kind we're planning to build ourselves in the near and distant future, which is why these scientists went before congress. We have the technology to find ET now out there. All we lack is money to build the tools we need.

Seth and most people involved in SETI, astrobiology, exoplanet and other related research would LOVE for there to be aliens visiting the Earth. It would make our job much easier and insure funding forever

I would say there is plenty of evidence to support the idea that Earth has been visited by aliens. There are just too many unexplained UFO sightings with seemingly intelligent behaviour. Now please read my posts carefully - I am not saying that UFOs are caused by aliens. Just that these anomalies support the idea that we have been visited. What I've never understood about Seth Shostak is that he is clearly a skeptic regarding UFOs. I've watched numerous interviews of him, such as on Larry King Live, and I am always surprised by the level of hostility he affords the subject. Now, he may be less confrontational about it when not on camera.
I'd also like to say I found the first sentence in your reply curious. You seem to suggest that you and Seth Shostak have explored the UFO subject in such depth as to make clear assertions about its validity.

About the other points you made:
1)Yes, space is big. Too big to comprehend. We all know this. But to say that it is too big for 'even a super advanced species' is a bit arrogant, no? I doubt you have the foresight or intelligence to predict technological trends even a decade from now, let alone a century. How about a millennia, or a thousand millennia from now? In a universe teeming with intelligence, can you discard the possibility that some of these civilizations may be millions of years ahead of us?? This is what I was getting at in my first post. When you think on this scale of time (and not just scale of distance), possibilities start to open up.

2)Why is it that every few months, we hear about some new bacterium discovered in some remote part of the world? There are people who have literally spent their entire lives studying a single type of bacteria. Your logic clearly doesn't work with human beings - you can bet that if we had the capability for convenient interstellar travel, we'd visit every star, every planet, every moon we could lay our hands on.

3)Yep, that's why I never do any travelling. Because I can just read about everything on a brochure. You seem to be in a scientific field. If so, you know damn well that we can't just study everything from a bloody telescope! Really?? A few years ago Japan launched a space craft that landed on an asteroid, collected some samples (well, malfunctioned somewhat), and returned to Earth. Why did they do that? Couldn't they have just sent a spacecraft there, taken some hi-res pictures, and come back home??

By the way, if aliens were in fact visiting our planet, and this were made known to the public, I highly doubt that would facilitate more funding to SETI. I used to run SETI At Home on my computer for a while before I got tired of it crashing my computer all the time. I did that primarily to search for evidence of ET. I know perfectly well that I wouldn't have bothered looking for something that not only existed, but had already made its way to our planet.

a reply to: Irako

JadeStar
2) There are literally billions of other Earths within our own galaxy alone. Why come to this one?

Assume the following:

1.) FTL capable society.
2.) Desire to explore.
3.) Ability to build miniature probes.

Why not visit all of them simultaneously? A 300mm wafer might have around 1000 ICs on it. Here is a back of the envelope calculation for production in one month:

1000 ics per wafer * 1000 wafers per month * 1000 fab houses = 1 Billion ICs produced in 1 month.

If an advanced society could produce miniature probes with FTL capability then they could produce enough probes to explore every single star in the Milky way in 300 months (25 years). Of course they probably wouldn't survive near the center, but the point is about astronomical figures.


a reply to: Harte

It is almost surely the case (pardon my math humor).

What is the difference between:

A.) Certainty
B.) A probability of 1

Mathematicians would say:

Almost surely (Wikipedia)
Almost sure convergence (Wikipedia)
Strong law of large numbers (Wikipedia)

I believe it is a disconnect between the symbol mapping from math to natural language.

Absolute certainty is an unreachable limit...yet the only way we can function day-to-day is on the basis of uncertain near-certainties...assuming that any number of horrible things that COULD happen, but almost certainly won't, will not happen...or else we'd be crippled, unable to do anything without fear...

There being extra-terrestrial life, even intelligent ET life, is one such near-certain uncertainty...yes, absolute certainty is an unreachable limit, with ANYTHING, yet we can be pretty damn close when you consider the numbers...beliefs to the contrary are based on silly old superstitions about geo-centrism and man being the pinnacle of a creation of which only the earth has any significance...again, silly and out-dated when viewed rationally and without prejudice.

I think it's funny we are still treading that "we are unique" ground to the tune of scientists claiming there is a "near 100% chance.." ridiculous.

There is a definitive, no doubt-about-it 100% chance. I guess we still must make baby-steps in regards to discoveries and our future.. kind of sad honestly.

originally posted by: Harte

originally posted by: 7918465230

originally posted by: kykweer


If you play the lottery forever, will you eventually win?

Yes. Forever is a long time, and the powerball is only like 197 million to 1 if I recall. So yes, you will eventually win. In fact, if you played forever (assuming you're alluding to eternity, which is essentially just a synonym of forever) you will win the lottery, no matter how great the odds, an infinite amount of times.

That is not the case at all.

Probability cannot become certainty.

Harte

I don't know where you got that idea, but it's wrong. I think you're underestimating the length of eternity. Think about eternity, and what it means for a few more minutes and get back to me.

I'm telling you, if you played the powerball for eternity, you would win an infinite amount of times, no matter how great the odds against you.

This carries a similar message. Keep in mind, I'm fairly certain this guy is a professor of physics.



Essentially, considering there is a finite amount of numbers to choose from in the lottery, and even if you expanded those numbers to stack the odds against you heavily, you would still win an infinite amount of times if you played for eternity.

originally posted by: Unity_99
Nice pdf from NASA:

www.nasa.gov...
Concerning how to make contact with ET.

Now logic once again:

Drakes Formula. Note we're in infinity with infinite recycling of stars through black holes and systems. Not a big bang system. But pretending along the 14 billion year cut off, which is ant hill earth science. If only .01% of civilizations make it past war, and inequality, to progress with clean high tech, they would be the masters of the universe, and billions of years ahead of us in technology.

They would terraform every system there is, create artificial planets and life would be abundant everywhere and within barren places, with more ecological diversity than we have on earth, waterfalls, fauna, wildlife

Oh, but strike all that, we're in infinity. Locating "firsts" is a bit hard.

Earth is highly managed, life is highly managed, souls are managed. Sometimes management changes hands in the mid to lower portions for a time.

Good Post ... I see it similarly. Layers and layers of management and organization to infinity. All energy in a process of growth, connecting dots and returning to the whole. And yes, management changes at the lower levels and from a given perspective may appear good or evil ... for a time.

Ehhh, in response to your " IT HAS BEEN DOCUMENTED AS EARLY AS 1988 THAT ALIENS ARE MANIPULATING HUMANITY " Every investigator that has investigated the UFO phenomena have all typically come to the same conclusion. " These aren't aliens, these are extra" dimensonal " entities..aka demons. You can also play with the words extra-terrestrial quite a bit. Yeah I underatand the dictionary defintion applied to extraterrestrial is something originating from outside of the planet, but when you look at the definition of both words together, boy does it paint a completly different picture of what we have been " conditioned " to believe and visualize about ETs

Extra - more than is due, usual, or necessary
Terrestrial - relating to or occurring on the earth. : living or growing on land instead of in water or air to:

To me this word doesn't mean something originating outside the earth but something on Earth that is more than necessary, or what is usual ( humans, animals, plants, insects, etc ) By Websters very own defintion, this is actually what ET means.

I think based on what I have read, there is a seperate definition for this compound word to conceal the nature of what scientists and the government tell us what they are and should believe about them. It's the status quo. Admitting that ETs are actually multidimensional ' demons' would go a long way to discredit the Atheist movement and put some stock towards Jesus.

The Catholic Church runs the show on this earth. If you don't believe it, you don't know much,. Seriously, go look for the evidence and you will see this to be true. The Jesuits ( Military Arm of the Catholic church ) have all their people in all the high places in EVERY governemnt. They are the Whore of Babylon riding the Beast ( Woman = Church, Beast = Nation, Sea = Multitude of people ) See The book of Daniel. John 3:16 ( Someone was scoffing at it in an earlier post but Hey Its the way of the Road bub, take it or leave it )

TrueMessiah

a reply to: 7918465230

Even if you play powerball for eternity the odd will always stay the same, so there is a probability you will always pick the wrong number.

The odds of finding an earth like planet that would justify us spending money we don't have is an incredible shot in the dark, we would literally have to be able to discover and see the universe all at once.

It will never happen, least of all in our lifetimes.

originally posted by: EnigmaAgent

Congress decided to spend some time figuring out whether intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe, and they learned that yes, it does. Two top astronomers, Dan Werthimer from the University of California and Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute, testified before congress there is a near 100 percent certainty aliens exist. Intelligent life existing in Congress, however, is less likely.

Short RT News video. Seems logical enough.

snip

Those who claim that "Intelligent" life exists outside of Earth has always been a joke to me. No one has any evidence and to say and to claim "near 100 percent certainty aliens exist" is ludicrous. They can't even come up with 1%! People such as Dan and Seth are just fighting for their jobs which does not return anything from money spent on their salaries. The last sentence in the quoted material is where my money is!

originally posted by: EnPassant


It is needed as an explanation because the idea that matter just gets up and starts walking by itself is not convincing.

We are the ones that decided that matter that happens to walk and think is special. You said it, "the idea" as in human defined. I agree life is very special as defined by humans, but in the universe we are no different than a any other chemical reaction, it is just in our case that our reaction is life. Oh BTW the term "life" is also another human created definition. In the terms of the universe it might define life as the life cycle of a sun instead.

You need to understand all this "special" life identification is a human only creation.

In order to travel the universe, you have to understand wormholes, warp drives, and be able to visualize concepts like curved space and explain them in practical terms. They may seem foreign to us now, but hey, if you try to teach a monkey how not to reproduce or any kind of logic, he's not going to be able to do it either.

What needs to happen is for us to survive first, get to the Space Age, your IQ will jump, and then there will be more Einsteins popping up on average. It should be noted, however, to keep moving up is not exactly how the game should be played. The point of the game is to keep moving up, "while having fun in the process." Otherwise, you will get bored and want to move to the lower dimensions again. The point of existence is...to try to experience as many things as possible.

originally posted by: JohnTheSmith


The primary reason I wanted to respond to you, was to tell you that I'm extremely jealous of your screen name.


I assume you play?

Yes I play but I want ep as an email address - someone got there before me though!