Maybe they just don't want to visit us. Maybe they are here and we just don't know it. This is basing on human growth and technology, not their's.

The problem with theories from people like this is he is basing the sightings of UFO's on modern day or at the very outset 20th Century.

Were the Egyptians in the time of the building of the pyramids 'UFO Buffs'?

UFO and Alien sightings have been going on for thousands of years. And I doubt the people who saw UFO's thousands of years ago had clubs and webpages on UFO's.

Sorry but I think that guy is speaking from his a**e!!

What makes you think that humans have reached the pinnacle of scientific discovery already? This hypothesis is based off modern science and therefore refuses to acknowledge that our current technology and scientific understanding might be very limited compared to a civilization that could potentially be millions of years more advanced than us.

That is to say that if they are "here", why would they reveal themselves to us and what's to say that they aren't already in plain sight but fobbed off as the fantasies of an over-active imagination? Again, if they are "here", why do we try to understand the motivation behind ET life by basing it off our own?

"Enrico Fermi, the brilliant physicist" - why is it that he can't see the error in his own thinking? Perhaps it's sycophants like the author of this article that have let his "brilliance" go to his head. It's people like this that hold back scientific discovery.

[edit on 24-6-2009 by dodgygeeza]

Originally posted by Astyanax
So no alien visitors.

No, they aren't 'visitors'. Visitors is a word you usually use when you denote a friendly encounter. These little imps aren't 'visiting' us. They are farming us and studying us and being dishonest. Those aren't 'visitors'. Those critters are not to be trusted and they aren't friendly.

Has this man never thought of the social implications if advanced Aliens visited us and how that is as good a reason as any to keep it quiet and leak it out over time.

IF advanced aliens are visiting us, humanity as a whole is not ready to be immersed in that information.. there would be big trouble in the less advanced countries.. and probably our own...

Not to mention all the wackjobs that are already out there, someone would probably kill a few of them, then trouble would start.

I have a great deal of respect for Fermi and his work, particularly that in theoretical physics. I can understand the semi-logical conclusion he came to, however I believe he was using variables that were consistent with his human experience.

Put more simply: We can't know what we don't know.

It seems very possible to me that "others" -- those that are nonhuman and sentient, might (a) be from within our own solar system (b) so very old in development that they set out to travel with ships containing active biospheres or even (c) have perfected the warping of spacetime such that immense distances can be traversed.

My concern and belief is that some of "them" are not here for purposes that are beneficial to humanity, much as FlyersFan indicated. That resonates as very probable to me, however I cannot support that notion with any verifiable evidence.

This thread is in the wrong forum

it should be in:

Conspiracy Theory Discussion Forums >> Aliens & UFO's

fermis paradox does raise some questions. Its not even encountering alien beings themselves but the lack of anything at all. First question would be - why hasnt earth been colonized? An ET civ has had 500 million years to do it but it didnt happen.

even if we say interstellar travel is extremely hard we would still expect to see the robot probes an ET civ would send. Theres no doubt when the tech allows we will send our first interstellar probe somewhere.

If ET civs are common we should be inundated with these things. There should be hundreds in our solar system. So far we havnt detected any.

Theres a complete absence of powerfull "beacon" type signals. Whether thats radio waves or optical. An advanced ETI could make soemthing really obvious like a blinking star (naked eye seti) something that a cow in a field could see. But we haven't found any of those.

The Great Silence or fermis paradox prompted a very spirited response. Ive read all sorts of ideas on why we wouldnt detect anything yet. But sometimes the simplest answer is usually correct. ET civs are extremely rare or dont exist at all in our galaxy.

[edit on 24-6-2009 by yeti101]

space aliens dont visit because they are very far away, and dont have the technology to traverse the distances.

is that so hard to grasp?

Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space.

Douglas Adams

I honestly don't think that Enrico Fermi's suggestion holds any more weight than those who claim we're not seeing them because of some speculated alien federation policies idea they lifted from Star Trek. While he certainly seems to have put quite a bit more thought into it than your average alien apologetics, the variables which must be accounted for before making a reasonable estimate on why they aren't around are thus far unknown today - and certainly were in his day.

All we can really do is keep up the search for evidence of microbial life either current or in the fossil record outside of Earth and keep our fingers crossed for something a bit more conversational is out there and decides to make contact.

DohBama - Space is even bigger than that. Everything we've thus far been able to observe is thought to be comparable to the area of a Quarter when compared to the Earth according to a cosmology lecture I listened too from Stanford University. If I'm not mistaken, the rate at which the universe is expanding (as well as accelerating it's expansion) has pushed the distance of some objects we observe back 46.5 billion light-years away - even though the universe is only about 14 billion years old. Beyond that point - we're blind to the Universe.

Well I believe and know they are here and visiting us. Just because everyone doesnt see them doent mean they arent here or visiting. I dont think we can say what they can do when we have no idea how they really operate, although I believe there are a select few on Earth who do know, but they are dismissed as crazy and nutty.

What is he talking about? We have detected them. Go look at all the radar data and witness sightings of alien creatures and abductions.

Originally posted by LeTan
Maybe they just don't want to visit us. Maybe they are here and we just don't know it. This is basing on human growth and technology, not their's.

Exactly. And there IS evidence they're here, so the point is moot anyway.

This is speculation distracting from the real quest, transparent government. I don't care if aliens are visiting us or not, I care that we are being denied access to information with the potential to save a LOT of lives.

Second, there's a loophole in his logic, he assumes that aliens are not visiting us now, and have not throughout history.

Finally, enough with drake's equation, we don't have the numbers to plug in damnit!