Would We Know ET if we Saw It?

Thanks for the replies -

a reply to: tanka418

Extraterrestrials, the advanced, sentient, space faring kind; necessarily come from a world that is VERY MUCH LIKE EARTH!

You state this as fact, as if you know, when in fact we have no facts about ET. We simply don't know.

So...how much more advanced is ET? ET was flying chemical powered airspace planes 500 years ago...just about where Earth was a couple of decades ago.

What evidence do you have for this? How can you know they weren't doing this 500 million years ago? What would they look like then?

actually we CAN know these things...By observing the kinds of craft, and activities ET engages in we can learn a lot about ET...

Again this is speculation, because there's no proof that we have seen their craft or their activities.

a reply to: Thorneblood

In Folklore and myth such creatures are called Trolls, Gnomes, "Stone Boys" and other assorted terms that basically mean a thing made out of rocks just talked to you.

That's a good point. As in the garden analogy, its possible that we would experience our interactions with hypothetical ETs as somethings else, for instance the mythical creatures you speak of.

a reply to: mysterioustranger

We havent clue as to what we are looking for. Thats why I know they, them, he, she, those or it...are already here.

How does not knowing what to look for prove to you that "they're" here?

a reply to: Kandinsky

Thanks for a very interesting post -

I think we have a certain degree of evidence-based speculation that's available to envisage intelligent, technological aliens. I say 'intelligent, technological' because they'd have to be to be in our neighborhood.

I'm curious, what speculation are you talking about? And what would they look like?

originally posted by: thesearchfortruth
Thanks for the replies -

You state this as fact, as if you know, when in fact we have no facts about ET. We simply don't know.

We have lots of facts about ET. there is some 12,000 years of reports, and, texts from back in the day that describe both ET and his technology...even if not well.

We can look at the myths and legends of virtually every culture ever to exist on Earth, right up to the present. We can compare those myths to the real world, and determine IF they are probable, and get a handle on that probability.

We can "look" at the reality of the stars themselves, and use that knowledge to correct old data...in short we can find ET's home star.

What evidence do you have for this? How can you know they weren't doing this 500 million years ago? What would they look like then?

What evidence do I have? Earth history for one, and again those ancient reports and texts about ET, and his technology. From around 500 years ago there are reports of flying crosses and orbs...both chemical powered.

Again this is speculation, because there's no proof that we have seen their craft or activities.

If you are going to be one of those who insist that there is no evidence, then there is no discussion possible here. The reality is that there exists abundant evidence, the only thing lacking is the ability to accept that fact. Further, that evidence spans a broad spectrum of "kinds", from physical trace to detailed reports, including DNA.

originally posted by: tanka418
By the way there are 3 perhaps 4 species visiting Earth currently:
Nommo...reptilians, from Nu2 Canis Majoris.
Nordics, tall whites, pleiadians...39 Tauri
Grays...Zeta 2 Reticuli

A Human appearing species from Upsilon Andromeda...perhaps, may be Gliese 67.

Uh-huh. Got any proof of these absurd claims?

originally posted by: tanka418
Further, that evidence spans a broad spectrum of "kinds", from physical trace to detailed reports, including DNA.

Hahaha. Oh man, thanks for the laugh. I suppose you believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny as well. Tell me, where are these detailed reports and where is the peer-reviewed genetic analysis on this alien DNA?

There's one born every minute...

Yes, they would be a whole lot smarter and probably call humanity on it.

originally posted by: AdmireTheDistance

originally posted by: tanka418
By the way there are 3 perhaps 4 species visiting Earth currently:
Nommo...reptilians, from Nu2 Canis Majoris.
Nordics, tall whites, pleiadians...39 Tauri
Grays...Zeta 2 Reticuli

A Human appearing species from Upsilon Andromeda...perhaps, may be Gliese 67.

Uh-huh. Got any proof of these absurd claims?

several thousand years worth of documents...You can start with the ancient vedas of India...then move on the ancient texts of Sumer, Egypt ... the list goes on and on...

Alternately, try checking out the star I mentioned...fully capable of supporting life just like we want...course now, you will say there is no proof, but, again, you would be ignoring the abundant facts contained in myth, legend, separated by time and space, that includes virtually every micro-culture this planet has known in recorded history....but, what the hey...History! Got nothing to do with it right?

originally posted by: AdmireTheDistance

originally posted by: tanka418
Further, that evidence spans a broad spectrum of "kinds", from physical trace to detailed reports, including DNA.

Hahaha. Oh man, thanks for the laugh. I suppose you believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny as well. Tell me, where are these detailed reports and where is the peer-reviewed genetic analysis on this alien DNA?

There's one born every minute...

So now you are telling jokes?!!??

Tell ya what; YOU find a scientist willing to do the peer review, then we can talk...until then take what you can get, and stop trying to weasel out of reality.

I just love people who think that because they don't accept something, that it isn't real. When the reality it is the 8000lb Gorilla of proverb.

originally posted by: tanka418
We have lots of facts about ET. there is some 12,000 years of reports, and, texts from back in the day that describe both ET and his technology...even if not well.

Reports of spirits, angels and demons probably go back as far as human history recalls too, but I don't find these reports any more convincing of the existence of those entities than the ET reports are of ETs. It's possible ET visited Earth in the past, and that would be fascinating, but all that evidence doesn't add up to any fact about ETs, or spirits either for that matter.

originally posted by: data5091
In the for what its worth department, I was reading an article on Open Minds the other day about Paul Hellyer. He of course has made many claims, one of which is that there is a government conspiracy regarding ufo's. But he mentioned in this story that there were as many as 80 different alien species we know of, most are not hostile towards humans, but he did say a few were........he also said some species we could walk right past and would not know they were in fact alien.

You apparently thought it had some worth or you wouldn't have posted it. What is the worth of reports of 80 different alien species visiting Earth when we don't even know of one? Entertainment value? Maybe it's good for a laugh.

There probably are many different alien species out there somewhere, so it's not that idea I laugh at. It's the idea someone knows anything at all about them that I laugh at.

originally posted by: Arbitrageur

Reports of spirits, angels and demons probably go back as far as human history recalls too, but I don't find these reports any more convincing of the existence of those entities than the ET reports are of ETs. It's possible ET visited Earth in the past, and that would be fascinating, but all that evidence doesn't add up to any fact about ETs, or spirits either for that matter.

Indeed, you probably haven't researched spirits, angels, etc. either...oh well...you're bad, you're loss.

Anyway, We aren't talking about spirits, angels, demons, etc...whether they are mis-identified "somethingelse's" or not...We are talking about "visitors from the stars" / "visitors from the heavens"; do you know how many ancient cultures describe "beings" this way? Prolly not, prolly think it's irrelevant...

And why is it that you don't find those ancient reports "convincing?" Is it because the're old? Or perhaps because you think that Humans back in the day were not so sophisticated? Or maybe you think that Humans back in the day were "simle"; you'd be seriously wrong on all counts. A quick look into history will show that man back in the day was every bit of what he is today...thus your rejection of real Human history is problematic at its very best...

You think the old reports are inconclusive, partly, I'm sure because some of them, as told by todays huxters, are simply not possible. For example the "Sirius Connection", which is mostly bull because Sirius can't support life just yet. But then again there is the legends of the Dogon, ancient India, Sumer, and all the rest that point to Sirius as a "home star", well except for the Dogon; they actually point more directly at a different star, And, no, its not Sirius B...but rather Nu 2 C.M. a real star with one confirmed planet in the Habitable zone...a water vapor Jovian planet...basically a very large ball of water. The Dogon have said of their "Nommo", that they are amphibians...wonder how that came about?

Anyway, sir; before you go claiming there is nothing known, there is no evidence...Please do some actual research first...as I am.





ETA: I just had a thought that should depress you. There is far more evidence for ET, and in this instance we will just limit it to the Nommo, The blue guys from ancient India, the reptilians...than there is for the planet around Nu 2 C. M.

Just to get this straight; there is more evidence for ET than there is for most exoplanets.

English is a language that reffers to animals as if they were things...

Now ET s are things too ?

I think modern age civilisation must rethink its culture fast before its over...

You are being deprived for centuries nowcthat the complete planet is alive and interconnected and by no means lifeless or soul-less.

YOU have been killing all of us with the earth in this manner...

THINK!

originally posted by: thesearchfortruth
I’m not convinced of alien visitation, but I do keep my mind open to the possibility. There are many things that we don’t know about our world, our minds, our spirits/souls. I don’t mean to get all metaphysical here, but the point is I think it’s foolish to close your mind off completely to the possibility that the Earth has been visited by ETs.

Would we even know if we had been visited? There are thousands of theories about what would happen if we were to be happened upon by a more advanced civilization. It’s completely possible they would be so different they wouldn’t recognize us as life forms.

Perhaps aliens would sense and interact with the world in a completely different way. I read in a (very thought provoking) book by Michael Crichton, a theory that ETs could perceive their environment by feeling pressure or temperature. Subtle air currents, vibrations etc...Or perhaps they see as we do, but in a different part of the color spectrum. There might be no common ground between us and such a being at all, no way of communicating.

Crichton asks:

...how would you explain Wordsworth's poem about daffodils to a blind watersnake?

Sphere

It is for this reason that I feel programs like SETI are probably useless. What basis is there for assuming the aliens use radio waves?

Because they're detectable.

As Freeman Dyson said, "Don't just search for what (you believe) is likely, search for what is detectable."


Radio waves are produced by electronic technology and they are useful for things other than communications. In fact Earth's biggest radio signal doesn't come from radio or TV transmitters. It comes from the Arecibo planetary radar which helps scientists learn about asteroids which approach the Earth and may potentially be a threat.

Radar is radio.


SETI doesn't just look for radio though. That's just the most commonly known form of SETI called "Radio SETI".

To learn more please refer to this nice thread on the ATS Space Exploration forum which explains all of the areas SETI is involved in these days.

originally posted by: tanka418
several thousand years worth of documents...You can start with the ancient vedas of India...then move on the ancient texts of Sumer, Egypt ... the list goes on and on...

I'm quite familiar with the vedic texts, and the history and writings of the ancient Sumerians and Egyptians. Perhaps you could point out which specific texts refer to aliens?

Tell ya what; YOU find a scientist willing to do the peer review, then we can talk...

It is not my responsibility to provide the evidence that you claim exists, supporting your absurd claims.

...until then take what you can get, and stop trying to weasel out of reality.

...Because you clearly have such a firm grip on reality...

Nevermind and apologies, dropping to that level only plays into Admire's childish game.....i should know better by now....it is ATS.

Nah, I don't think we'd recognize them at all. We don't even notice the life that is around us all the time on Earth. There are microscopic lifeforms around us all the time and we don't notice them. And every time we step outside, there are insects, rodents, lizards etc around us that we don't notice.

So if extra-terrestrials ships were the size of flies, we wouldn't notice them unless they got close to us. And if they had their own stealth technology, we wouldn't notice them then. How many people actually catch & test each fly they see, to check if it's a real fly?

There's also the issue of camouflage. It's basic knowledge for hunters and spies to disguise themselves. If extra-terrestrials disguised themselves as leaves or tree bark, we wouldn't even notice. We don't notice the insects & lifeforms that do that anyway. So we could actually have billions of bio-engineered extra-terrestrial ships around us right now & we wouldn't notice them. How many people even take the time to look at their surroundings in detail anyway? You can generally walk in grass for any 20 feet and find ants & other bugs, and they're not even trying to hide. What chance would we have to notice ant-like ET drones?

I would also imagine flexible or "fluffy" lightweight ships that could hide in clouds. They could observe us constantly like satellites & we'd never notice them either. And these are just the basic scenarios.

Excellent thread. I've thought about this subject many times. One area I am really intrigued in is that of astro-archeology (if that's even a thing?) In other words, we look for mega-constructs in the cosmos but we might not recognize them as artificial.

Think about it this way: you bring a chimpanzee from his home in the forest where he's lived his entire life into a modern city with skyscrapers and all the whiz-bang that goes with it. Does he understand that you and the other things that look like you built these things? Or is this just a new and different aspect of his "natural environment." I tend to think he wouldn't immediately recognize something as artificial because of the framework he has inside his own head.

We might have evidence of galactic civilizations all around us and just can't comprehend something could be artificial.

a reply to: thesearchfortruth

Yes, but not perhaps in their disguise.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

originally posted by: AdmireTheDistance

I'm quite familiar with the vedic texts, and the history and writings of the ancient Sumerians and Egyptians. Perhaps you could point out which specific texts refer to aliens?

Pick One, any one...how about we go back to the beginning...

It is not my responsibility to provide the evidence that you claim exists, supporting your absurd claims.

I guess you not payin' attention? Whatever...


Dude, IF you want peer reviewed data...it is you that must find the scientist to do the review.

And, actually, that would be a scientist that my "side" gets to approve. Otherwise, that additional data, regardless of what it supports is worthless, and must be rejected...but I guess you haven't thought that whole thing trough...

...Because you clearly have such a firm grip on reality...

I have a good idea; let us NOT play psychologist...okay? You are not qualified.

And since we touched on "qualified" for the moment...it appears that you suffer from a more than healthy amount of data prejudice. Your expectations of data seem unrealistic.

Anyway, not a very good attempt at Weaseling, you failed to escape reality.

So I take it that the ancients were somehow incapable of recording history correctly, and just had to include some fiction? Is that how it works??? OR is it that YOU didn't like what they wrote and decided it meant something else?

originally posted by: WHWIV
Excellent thread. I've thought about this subject many times. One area I am really intrigued in is that of astro-archeology (if that's even a thing?) In other words, we look for mega-constructs in the cosmos but we might not recognize them as artificial.

Think about it this way: you bring a chimpanzee from his home in the forest where he's lived his entire life into a modern city with skyscrapers and all the whiz-bang that goes with it. Does he understand that you and the other things that look like you built these things? Or is this just a new and different aspect of his "natural environment." I tend to think he wouldn't immediately recognize something as artificial because of the framework he has inside his own head.

We might have evidence of galactic civilizations all around us and just can't comprehend something could be artificial.

The subjects of your post and this thread in general were the topic of the latest episode of this show: Life in Space - Can We Find it

Discovering bacteria on Mars would be big news. But nothing would scratch our alien itch like making contact with intelligent life. Hear why one man is impatient for the discovery, and also about the new tools that may speed up the “eureka” moment. One novel telescope may help us find E.T. at home, by detecting the heat of his cities.

Also, the father of modern SETI research and how decoding the squeals of dolphins could teach us how to communicate with aliens.

Guests:

Lee Billings – Journalist and author of Five Billion Years of Solitude: The Search for Life Among the Stars

Olivier Guyon – Optical physicist, astronomer, University of Arizona and Suburu telescope; 2012 McArthur Genius award winner

Jeff Kuhn – Physicist, Institute for Astronomy in Honolulu, Colossus Telescope

Frank Drake – Astronomer, SETI Institute

Denise Herzing – Behavioral biologist and research director of the Wild Dolphin Project

originally posted by: enlightenedservant
Nah, I don't think we'd recognize them at all. We don't even notice the life that is around us all the time on Earth. There are microscopic lifeforms around us all the time and we don't notice them. And every time we step outside, there are insects, rodents, lizards etc around us that we don't notice.

So if extra-terrestrials ships were the size of flies, we wouldn't notice them unless they got close to us. And if they had their own stealth technology, we wouldn't notice them then. How many people actually catch & test each fly they see, to check if it's a real fly?

Great point, and a logical progression:





I've always contended that if I were an alien I wouldn't send huge ships to fly around Earth's skies. I'd first observe the Earth from a distance with a hypertelescope which could see something down to the size of a Honda accord.

Then I'd send a bunch of nanotech sized probes in something no bigger than a coffee can. It takes much less energy to accelerate a smaller mass to speeds which are a significant fraction of the speed of light.

As it turns out there are some Earthlings (college students) thinking of doing something similar right now:

The first international contest to let students shape the future of interstellar travel.

About this project

Haven’t you once looked up into the night sky and were awestruck by this majestic, yet silent landscape? The carpet of stars and galaxies seemingly so close that you would just have to stretch out your hand to touch them? And maybe the obvious question came into your mind: Can we get there?

When I was a kid, on a warm summer night, I was lying on a spot of grass, alone, the hum of a highway far away, and asked myself exactly this question. Can I get there? Can I reach the stars? I could not answer this question. But I needed to find out…

The idea behind Project Dragonfly, sending small spacecraft, to another star, propelled by a laser beam, emerged in early 2013 when I visited Professor Gregory Matloff in New York. Greg is one of the key figures in interstellar research. We talked about different propulsion methods for going to the stars and realized that nobody had yet done a design for an interstellar laser-propelled mission. Soon after this conversation, Project Dragonfly was officially announced by the Initiative for Interstellar Studies. However, it took another year to get to the point where we were able to organize an international design competition in order to speed up our search for a feasible mission to another star, based on technologies of the near future.

-Andreas Hein, Deputy Director i4is, Project Lead Dragonfly

Today, we live in a unique period of time: we may soon have the technological capabilities to build and launch a spacecraft to the stars. Isn’t that amazing? Humanity has existed for over 200,000 years and now we live in a time where we can work towards going to the stars. More precisely, scientists and engineers have been working on approaches to get to the stars since about 50 years.

What is Project Dragonfly?

Many previous approaches for going to the stars have depended on extremely large and heavy spacecraft, based on concepts such as nuclear propulsion systems, for example nuclear fusion or antimatter. Besides the technological barriers to realising these propulsion systems, they have another disadvantage: they all have to carry their fuel with them, which is then burnt to generate the propulsive thrust. As interstellar travel requires velocities at least of a couple of percent of the speed of light, large quantities of fuel are required. And by large, we mean really large! Existing concepts of fusion-propelled spacecraft are as heavy as skyscrapers. Accelerating all the fuel which is ultimately burnt is actually not a very efficient way to get to the stars

Project Dragonfly aims at a different approach: the spacecraft don’t carry any propellant with them. But how can you propel a spacecraft without any propellant? The answer is that you use an external source of energy. The basic idea is not new - it is, in fact, very old. For centuries, humans have travelled the seas using sailing ships. We also plan to use a sail. But a sail which is made of an extremely thin reflective surface. This sail would be illuminated by a laser beam from a laser power station somewhere in the solar system. The photons of the laser beam push the sail, similar to the wind pushing a sail of a sail ship. And by pushing the sail, the spacecraft slowly accelerates. However, as the spacecraft does not use any on-board fuel, it can accelerate to very high velocities in the range of several percent of the speed of light.

Furthermore, Project Dragonfly builds upon the recent trend of miniaturization of space systems. Just a few decades ago, thousands of people were involved in developing the first satellite Sputnik. Today, a handful of university students are able to build a satellite with the same capability as Sputnik, which is much cheaper and weighs hundreds of times less than the first satellite. We simply think further. What could we do with the technologies in about 20-30 years from now? Would it be possible to build spacecraft that can go to the stars but are as small as today’s picosatellites or even smaller?

Why a competition?

Usually space engineers develop a preliminary engineering design. They use this initially study to see if such a mission is indeed possible and what technologies are needed. If the study is deemed feasible, investments in developing the required technologies and in hiring and training the right people can be made.

Thus, an engineering design is the first step towards realizing an interstellar mission. This is exactly the purpose of the Project Dragonfly Design Competition. Five international university teams are currently working on studies for a small laser-propelled interstellar spacecraft. The final design reports of the teams shall cover all areas, which are relevant to make the mission a success and to return scientific data from such a mission: instruments, communication, laser sail design, power supply, secondary structure, deceleration propulsion etc. Furthermore, the technological as well as economic feasibility of the architecture shall be assessed by the teams. The teams and i4is will meet in London later this year in order to evaluate their designs

The results from the competition shall serve as a basis for future technology development for the realisation of such a mission. With the increasing interest in cubesats and solar sails, this is becoming ever more likely.