The E.T. Hypothesis can be tested

You're getting closer MR but you still have bias in your argument.

ET means extra (beyond) terrestrial (Earth), and the hypothesis part is looking for life from beyond Earth travelling to Earth to visit in a flying saucer or such. This is what you are testing for.

You really appear to have grasped some of the better points of life existing in some form or other elsewhere in the universe with a decent grasp of the science behind it now let's take it further and look at the visitation part.

The distances between stars is huge, I mean really huge. 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 drug store, but that's just peanuts to space.

So in this massive, almost inconceivable gigantic area, the chances of bumping into someone else are tiny, really, really, smaller than your pinkie nail tiny.

Now for that person that you've bumped into to have the ability to transfer themselves over these huge distances at the same time you were able to perceive them is even tinier; teeny, weenie, tiny, winy. Because time is as equally massive as space and bumping into someone there is just as ridiculous.

So the hypothesis for ETH being tested would be to bump into someone who was spacefaring and was here - not something that's really provable by any scientific means (ergo - not provable).

But it's good to see you using methods, or arguments, that are scientifically accepted. I just don't think you're gonna get your little green (or grey) man out of this.

Keep it up though, you'll be a sceptic soon!

-m0r

reply to post by m0r1arty


I don't think we would have that problem because we wouldn't be bumping into other civilizations.

This is why I mentioned things like biomarkers.

Biomarkers will tell us which planets have life.

Space is vast but we can make it smaller through technology. We did the same thing on earth.

Years ago people would say, the other side of the planet is impossible to reach.

We then built boats, trains, airplanes, jets and now we have the internet and the global economy.

So as we discover new technologies and they get more advanced space will become smaller and smaller.

We are already discovering exoplanets and we are discovering liquid water, signs of life and conditions for life to exist on other planets.

Space is the new frontier and science and technology will shrink space.

At first we will be colonizing and traveling to planets in our solar system. Taking a trip to Mars will be taking a trip to France.

We will then look outside of our solar system.

This is if we don't destroy ourselves first.


[edit on 16-2-2010 by Matrix Rising]

The argument about vast distances and impossibilities of interstellar travel is IMHO ridiculous.

If advanced propulsion methods are possible which allow for fast space travel then their discovery by advanced civilisations is inevitable.

To deny this is to argue that there could not possibly be such a discovery in the future. Not in ten years, not in a hundred, not in a million years. No true skeptic worth his salt would be in his right mind to argue such a point, only the denier would take such a position on faith.

The argument for some also seems to be that UFOs do not have an extraterrestrial origin due to those distances, therefore if UFOs are real then they must be something else.

This is not good science either since a (flawed) conservative theoretical presupposition ("space travel is just not plausible") is given more credit than actual data. If interstellar travel is plausible and advanced civilisations do exist we would in fact expect to see ET probes.

Thus the denier's premise is flawed, on evidential, logical and theoretical grounds.

I need not remind that the denier would also have to argue against the validity of the Fermi paradox.

Originally posted by m0r1arty
ET means extra (beyond) terrestrial (Earth), and the hypothesis part is looking for life from beyond Earth travelling to Earth to visit in a flying saucer or such.

-m0r

Could the OP clarify whether the ET hypothesis mentioned is as above or just "looking for life from beyond Earth" which if found adds to the possibility that some form of ET could be "travelling to Earth to visit in a flying saucer or such".

Thanks.

I see what Matrix is going for here, and I agree for the most part. Though I don't see the ETH being validated in any way by finding microbial, or even unintelligent multicellular organisms, it would give a much better foundation to the idea of very intelligent, evolved life. I don't think anyone's really saying that can't happen elsewhere in the universe, but the idea that it's both out there and visiting us here is where the distinction lies.

Points made, such as technology closing distances across the planet is a good thought, and could be considered the same as across galaxies.

The biggest problem is that even after clearing the hurdle of "Life Elsewhere", we've still got the huge mountain to cross of "If we're being visited, it's by whom?" After discovering life, it becomes easier to believe that there are very advanced, very evolved creatures out there. However, whether they're within an area of the universe to find us, whether they actually care, whether they're actually existing in the same blink of a timeframe as humanity, and many other factors come in to play.

All in all, my own personal opinion is that all of these things are very possible, even the ET visitation hypothesis. Unfortunately, being possible doesn't equal being true, and I've yet to see anything that proves any of it to me.

I don't think the OP realized when starting this thread that the ETH means what it does in regard to UFOs. It seems as though the point that is being made is that we seem to be getting closer to discovering the existence of extraterrestrial life.

From what I understand, which is very little so take it for what it's worth, the probability - as calculated by a seemingly intelligent person whose name I can't remember - that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is, for all intents and purposes, indistinguishable from 100%; in other words, 99.(long string of 9's) percent. To put it yet another way, the probability that intelligent life exists elsewhere is just about identical to the probability that it exists here on Earth.

Furthermore, according to Fermi's paradox - as I understand it - we should by all accounts BE experiencing extraterrestrial visitation. However, one thing I have never heard or read being discussed regarding Fermi is this (and please help me out here if you have heard any such discussions): If we were, hypothetically, to be visited by extraterrestrials, how would we know? Would we know? What kind of evidence for such visitation should we expect to find?



[edit on 17-2-2010 by Orkojoker]