Where are the aliens?

a reply to: moebius

They are everywhere. They have perfected a cloaking device which allows them to be stealth. We have not reached the point where we can see through said cloaking device. Also, they have the ability to alter their molecular structure to blend in here among the human culture.

originally posted by: 321Go
Intelligent life like ours is not pre-destiny. If it were not for the KT impact, and the already devastating changes in our environment before the impact, we would still have dinosaurs roaming our planet and we'd be nothing but small mammals. It was the demise of the dinosaurs that opened up the path (lack of predators, ample food and territory) for our development. That, by any measure, is fluke, not destiny.

This is no fluke, It was by design.

originally posted by: soulpowertothendegree
a reply to: moebius

They are everywhere. They have perfected a cloaking device which allows them to be stealth. We have not reached the point where we can see through said cloaking device. Also, they have the ability to alter their molecular structure to blend in here among the human culture.

You are correct. Though the blending part is only relative to how they blend. They do not directly take the form of humans because of their particle state does not allow finished details only outlines.

One thing i have not thought about was humans gaining the ability to see through their stealth technology. It may happe at some point. And when it does They will have a clear understanding of just how many are here on Earth. But as of now, They can turn on their abduction beams well remaining stealthed. So they can abduct people without anyone even knowing a saucer is hovering over said house. Or perched beside a sky scrapper.

a reply to: KellyPrettyBear

What you are describing is the rare earth hypothesis. The last point in the list.

I think the question could be "When" are the aliens, rather than "where".

What I mean is that with all of those planets that have been out there for a few billion years, why are we assuming that any technological civilization that may arise on them is there at this current moment? Maybe some are, but maybe many more have come and gone, and many more still have not yet arisen.

If we consider that the exoplanets we see around us (and the ones in our galaxy that we haven't seen) that are potentially habitable by a technological alien civilization, those planets have probably been that way for 100s of millions, if not a few billion, years. Our own Earth has been habitable for a few billion years.

Now, consider that a technological civilization has a finite lifespan. For lack of a better knowledge of the length of that civilization average lifespan, lets say it's 2 Million years, or even 5 million years. Those may be very big numbers considering the human species has been around for only 250,000 years, our civilization for only 50,000 years, and we began using advanced technology as a civilization (however infantile that advanced tech is at the moment) barely 200 years ago.

But even though that 2 to 5 million year average lifespan for a technological civilization seems to be hugely long, they are nothing compared to the billion-year time frames during which those technological civilizations could have existed in our galaxy.

So there could have been many many many technological civilizations that had existed during the past billion years. heck, there could have been many that existed in the relatively short time since the beginning of the Dinosaur age (about 200 million years ago)...

...HOWEVER, there may be only a few that existed simultaneously at any given time, including now --i.e., there may be only a few of those civilizations existing simultaneously with us right now.

It's a version of the "Rare Earth Hypothesis". Although in this version, technological civilizations may be very common in general, given a billion-year time frame, BUT it may be rare to find those civilizations existing at any given moment during that billion year time frame, such as right now.

a reply to: micpsi

I don't "believe" in the absence of testable evidence of alien visitors. I don't see any. All you've got are stories. And yes I have to use the word "testable" as the definition of evidence in UFO circles seems to be more or less "anything that sounds like it would support my UFO belief".

Count me as one who finds no real reason to think aliens have ever visited our planet, although I believe there must be other planets supporting life. The question is, what kind of life?

Intelligent life?

If intelligent life, how much more or less advanced than us?

What resources are available to them?

I don't see any reason to automatically assume that any other intelligent life in the universe is automatically more advanced than us. If we were/are being visited, why just the occasional fly by? I have to assume that any alien life exploring the universe has the same motivations as we do. Explore other worlds, wither by unmanned robot/vehicles, or by manned flights.

My conclusion is that whatever intelligent life is out they, they are no more able to achieve interstellar spaceflight anymore successfully than we have been able to, and we have made huge strides in space exploration given the limited number of years since the program launched.

If I end up seeing a UFO tonight, I'll come back and edit my response...

originally posted by: usernameconspiracy
My conclusion is that whatever intelligent life is out they, they are no more able to achieve interstellar spaceflight anymore successfully than we have been able to, and we have made huge strides in space exploration given the limited number of years since the program launched.

It could be that of the few technological civilizations there may be out there in our galaxy (see my post above why I say "of the few"), there are some who are more advanced than us that have achieved some form of interstellar travel. However, as you indicated, maybe interstellar travel is still very difficult and/or has limitations. Interstellar travel may be so difficult that even those civilizations more advanced than us have not yet striven to visit us.

I'm not sure why some people assume that if there are intelligent aliens out there, then it is necessarily a fact that some of them could easily travel anywhere in space at will.

I realize that the universe/galaxy is big, and there is a large number of planets where civilizations could be, so the odds are that one of those civilization somewhere has developed easy-peasy space travel, but again, see my post above about how many of those civilization may exist right now, concurrently with the time our civilization, or even our species, has been around.

originally posted by: KellyPrettyBear
a reply to: intrptr

That my friend is one of my favorite books...

I'm talking possibilities and probabilities
here...

none of us in this thread 'know' anything
for certain and that definitely includes
you and I.

Kev

I know I've seen spirits on occasion and a "thingy" in the sky, too.

As I recall, so have you.

So its not like we haven't both been exposed to alternative 'norms'. Sorry if I got that part wrong about your shared experience.

originally posted by: moebius
a reply to: KellyPrettyBear

What you are describing is the rare earth hypothesis. The last point in the list.

That is correct.

Basically a rounding error.

It's the 96% where perhaps everyone
else is at that is on my discussion list.

originally posted by: intrptr

originally posted by: KellyPrettyBear
a reply to: intrptr

That my friend is one of my favorite books...

I'm talking possibilities and probabilities
here...

none of us in this thread 'know' anything
for certain and that definitely includes
you and I.

Kel

I know I've seen spirits on occasion and a "thingy" in the sky, too.

As I recall, so have you.

So its not like we haven't both been exposed to alternative 'norms'. Sorry if I got that part wrong about your shared experience.

No problem.

I seldom discuss my actual views. It's very hard
to find the kind of mind I want to converse with.

Kev

a reply to: moebius

Catastrophic/suppressing solutions:
- Natural hazards: Comets, asteroids, supervolcanos, supernovae, gamma-ray bursts.
- Self-destruction: The classic. Possible options are nuclear war, ecological holocaust, misuse of bio/nanotechnology.
- Deadly probes: (Von Neumann) probes destructing/resetting life.
- Transcendence: Advanced civilizations transform into something else, not recognizable as life as we know it.
- Isolationism: Civilizations choose to avoid any contact, due to external or internal stress/threat.

Probably a mix of all of the above.

Some of them are abducting humans from time to time. So, it means some of them are already here. And it should concern us, because we can't stop them from doing what they do. What if they eventually decide to wipe us off the planet? It doesn't seem to fit their agenda, but, you never know...

So we are living in a computer simulation, who types all the code? billions and trillions of bits of code, code for every raindrop, flower petal, blade of grass, every letter in every book, every grain of sand, every leaf, every snow flake? I don't think so.

originally posted by: pikestaff
So we are living in a computer simulation, who types all the code? billions and trillions of bits of code, code for every raindrop, flower petal, blade of grass, every letter in every book, every grain of sand, every leaf, every snow flake? I don't think so.

While I don't necessarily believe we are living in a computer simulation, it would be inefficient to program it the way you describe.

An efficient way to design it would be to program in only the basic parameters of physics -- i.e., how particles behave (i.e., basically program the unified theory of physics into the computer). And then tell the computer that there are "n" number of particles, program in a force (such as something like the big bang) that gives those particles an initial velocity and direction, and then wait and see the result of billions of years of those programmed particle movements and particle behaviors, and the interactions that occur over those billions of years. That "billions of years" would be the time frame inside the computer simulation. Of course, being a computer simulation, the programmer outside the simulation could speed up those billions of years.

So if you want to simulate a universe, you don't necessarily need to control every motion. All you need to do is give an initial condition/velocity to each particle, and then let the simulation loose to see what happens. Possibly, a simulation of sentient life may spontaneously develop.

a reply to: Soylent Green Is People

What's called "just in time compilation" would
reduce virtualization resource requirements
by many factors of 10.

I mean the 'Universe' could functionally be
empty for all it matters as we may be
perpetually stranded in one
'solar sysyem'.

I'm not saying I agree with the simulation
hypothesis but it does have a number of
merits.

a reply to: moebius

Maybe the aliens live in places like THIS

If so, they would have little or no reason to visit cold nasty
planets like ours.

But maybe they like Venus for example! Maybe Adamski
was right!

Kev

We are the aliens, and we exist. So, yes, aliens exist, and are here and in many, many other places in the Universe...

a reply to: micpsi

By adding the word "testable", you slyly manage to ignore an encyclopaedic volume of evidence of varying quality that has accumulated since 1947...

'Evidence of varying quality?' Care to elaborate on what you mean by that, with an example or two to make it clear?

You beg the question that genuine evidence of alien presence should be testable in order to count as scientific evidence. But this misunderstands the very nature of this evidence. The UFO phenomenon is NOT amenable to the methodology of science - it cannot be controlled or repeated at will. To argue that it should be is to be completely unrealistic.

Thunderstorms and volcanic eruptions cannot be controlled or repeated at will, but the sciences of meteorology and volcanology still manage to limp along somehow. 'Ufology' remains a pseudoscience.

Scientific evidence is not necessarily lab evidence. General relatively was verified by observing a transit of Mercury. Public surveys can and do produce scientifically valid information, which is used to test relevant propositions. The science of astronomy depends almost wholly on observation. Astronomers spend their time looking up at the sky, just as ufologists do. How is it that they get results, and ufologists don't?

If a phenomenon is real, it's usually possible to find evidence for it. As I type this, someone, somewhere, is experiencing (or claiming to have experienced) a UFO sighting. But 66 years of such 'sightings' have produced neither a shred of evidence nor a falsifiable theory of the 'phenomenon'. Meanwhile the science of astronomy has advanced by leaps and bounds.

Don't you ever wonder whether the tree you're barking up may really be a flagpole?