UFOs - Is anybody out there?

[Barry Ten]

10 minutes ago, 34theletterbetweenB&D said:

Predates Douglas Adams writings, as I was told that in the 1960s during O level Physics. If 'free movement in time' time travel was possible then it would manifestly exist, because once first developed it will spread limitlessly through the entire available time span. And we don't have it, so it is impossible.

 

Not quite as straightforward as that, though, because where time-travel is permitted in certain physics theories and cosmologies, it's more like traversing a bridge that only exists between two points in time (and space). So, if someone constructed the bridge tomorrow, an arbitrary number of time travellers could travel back from the future to November 8th 2019, but no earlier.

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

2 minutes ago, Barry Ten said:

 

Not quite as straightforward as that, though, because where time-travel is permitted in certain physics theories and cosmologies, it's more like traversing a bridge that only exists between two points in time (and space). So, if someone constructed the bridge tomorrow, an arbitrary number of time travellers could travel back from the future to November 8th 2019, but no earlier.

The argument is specific to the 'free movement in time' time travel. Which would of course inevitably develop from early fumblings such as 'bridges', as knowhow and technique advanced, so the argument holds.

[Chris M]

So aliens who are so advanced that they can cross the huge void of space come to have a look at earth but do not want is to see them. After flying all that way they get here and forget to switch the lights off on their spaceship. Unlikely.

[JeremyC]

1 hour ago, jf2682 said:

We are alone in this entire universe.  No evidence of any extra terrestrial life yet, but many just want to believe that it exists, and so, to paraphrase Descartes, it does exist.  Sort of like religion really.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

[boxbrownie]

2 hours ago, jf2682 said:

We are alone in this entire universe.  No evidence of any extra terrestrial life yet, but many just want to believe that it exists, and so, to paraphrase Descartes, it does exist.  Sort of like religion really.

Not so sure, I think there is more evidence for UFOs than any religion 

[Flying Pig]

33 minutes ago, jf2682 said:

I think it is a mistake to apply the notion that, because the universe is so big etc (witness Carl Sagan's billions and billions of stars etc) there has to be life.  We see life teaming on earth in the most unusual places, but how can we logically state there has to be life elsewhere. 

 

Correct.  With our current knowledge, we cannot state with certainty that life exists beyond Earth.

 

34 minutes ago, jf2682 said:

So, in the absence of proof of life, there isn't any. 

 

Making precisely the same logical error you reject above.  The correct answer, regardless of one's personal opinion, is that we just don't know.

 

[Joseph_Pestell]

I tend to side with the view that there must be "life" out there somewhere because the universe is so large. But it may well be "Life, Jim, but not as we know it".

 

Anyway, given that most of us can not even manage to speak languages from nearby nations, how are we going to communicatewith them?

[Reorte]

23 minutes ago, jf2682 said:

Interesting points, but whilst we collectively and individually want to believe there is intelligent life out there, and we will no doubt keep looking, I think it is a mistake to apply the notion that, because the universe is so big etc (witness Carl Sagan's billions and billions of stars etc) there has to be life.  We see life teaming on earth in the most unusual places, but how can we logically state there has to be life elsewhere.  So, in the absence of proof of life, there isn't any.  My view, and personally I am happy that we are alone.  No one to rescue us.

 

That doesn't logically stand up.

 

We know life can exist. We know other stars exist. Nowadays we even know planets outside the solar system exist - mostly rather unearth-like but the detection methods we've got bias us towards them anyway. It is therefore reasonable to extrapolate to Earth-sized planets existing in suitable orbits - the evidence we've got points towards them as being rather more likely than not. So what are the odds of life on them? We haven't got a clue about the likelihood of life arising in suitable conditions, that's true, but we certainly know it's possible, we're living proof.

 

There is no knowledge about life not from Earth. As has been repeated absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. We've not even looked in any other likely-sounding locations and found nothing. All we can say at present is that similar conditions to Earth almost certainly exist elsewhere in the universe - there's enough evidence to say that's likely. Beyond that, no reason to believe any point on the unlikely to common spectrum more than any other.

[Nick C]

39 minutes ago, Reorte said:

 

That doesn't logically stand up.

 

We know life can exist. We know other stars exist. Nowadays we even know planets outside the solar system exist - mostly rather unearth-like but the detection methods we've got bias us towards them anyway. It is therefore reasonable to extrapolate to Earth-sized planets existing in suitable orbits - the evidence we've got points towards them as being rather more likely than not. So what are the odds of life on them? We haven't got a clue about the likelihood of life arising in suitable conditions, that's true, but we certainly know it's possible, we're living proof.

 

There is no knowledge about life not from Earth. As has been repeated absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. We've not even looked in any other likely-sounding locations and found nothing. All we can say at present is that similar conditions to Earth almost certainly exist elsewhere in the universe - there's enough evidence to say that's likely. Beyond that, no reason to believe any point on the unlikely to common spectrum more than any other.

Exactly. We know the observable universe is 93 billion light-years across, and contains more than 2 trillion galaxies - and therefore around 10^24 stars. Chances are, then, that the number of planets is likely to be similar (not all stars have planets, but many have more than one). That's roughly a trillion planets just in our galaxy.

 

We know that the conditions for life to evolve happened on Earth. We don't know if those are the only conditions that can result in life, but even if they are, there's a fair chance they have, or will, occur on several other planets. We will never be able to prove it one way or the other, but statistically, it's highly likely that life does exist elsewhere in the universe (in fact, it's very likely that it does elsewhere in this galaxy).

 

However the chances of said life existing close enough in both time and space to communicate with us is nil - we've only been able to communicate remotely for around 100 years, out of the 3.5 billion years that life on earth has existed. Even the whole of our recorded history only goes back a few thousand years. We can be pretty confident there's no life-supporting planets within the region we can communicate with now (around, logically, 100 light-years diameter).

 

Basically, in the grand scheme of things, we're pretty small!

[woodenhead]

Perhaps another factor in our interest in flying saucers and visitors is that it gives the human race a get out when our sun gives up.

 

If other planets can hold life and the inhabitants of said planet can visit us then ergo we can move to that planet - the typical human response of invade and take over in order to survive.

 

The idea we are trapped on our little planet in the vastness of space and therefore doomed to be wiped out is not an acceptable idea to us.

[boxbrownie]

2 hours ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

 

Anyway, given that most of us can not even manage to speak languages from nearby nations, how are we going to communicatewith them?

The same way we as a people speak to any other country.......with deliberately slow, raised voices 

[Gibbo675]

27 minutes ago, woodenhead said:

Perhaps another factor in our interest in flying saucers and visitors is that it gives the human race a get out when our sun gives up.

 

If other planets can hold life and the inhabitants of said planet can visit us then ergo we can move to that planet - the typical human response of invade and take over in order to survive.

 

The idea we are trapped on our little planet in the vastness of space and therefore doomed to be wiped out is not an acceptable idea to us.

Hi Woodenhead,

 

Having had a quick think of what the extremes of possibility may be, either Earth is a tiny planet, part of a solar system in the enormous vastness of space with countless other planets in other either similar or dissimilar solar systems or, here we are on Earth and this is it, nothing else. I can't prove or disprove either from where I am in life, anyone that says otherwise is likely repeating what NASA or similar have told them and nothing more which is a strange way to look at the whole of it one way or the other.

 

Another factor that I have considered was raised in Hitchhikers Guide but doesn't tend to get much air generally is the subject of scale, should all life forms on this Earth be as a product of environment then beings form another place would be products of theirs and not necessarily compatible with the Earth. I note that in Star Trek and Star Wars most life forms seem to range between 3'6" and 7' tall, granted that is the extremes of the sizes of actors available such films but how might this work in real life ?

 

For fun and from Hitchhikers guide:

 

“the mighty ships tore across the empty wastes of space and finally dived screaming on to the first planet they came across - which happened to be the Earth - where due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog.”

 

What ever the truth may turn out, its all a bit mind boggling.

 

Gibbo.

[Reorte]

1 minute ago, Gibbo675 said:

Another factor that I have considered was raised in Hitchhikers Guide but doesn't tend to get much air generally is the subject of scale, should all life forms on this Earth be as a product of environment then beings form another place would be products of theirs and not necessarily compatible with the Earth. I note that in Star Trek and Star Wars most life forms seem to range between 3'6" and 7' tall, granted that is the extremes of the sizes of actors available such films but how might this work in real life ?

 

Sometimes an issue with science fiction worldbuilding. Too similar to us, unconvincing. Alien for the sake of alien, being completely unable to answer (even vaguely) the question "How on earth (pun intended) did that emerge?", suspension of disbelief is killed, at least for me. If we ever do discover alien life, which at the moment doesn't look utterly implausible (I'm not talking intelligent life here, just the chances of it existing on Europa or another moon with a subsurface ocean) it'll be fascinating in both whatever similarities and differences exist. Convergent evolution is a fact, just how would that play out in similar conditions but a completely separate origin for example?

 

Of course as you point out films and TV shows are constrained by what's actually practical to make too (plus there's a good degree of convention acceptance, in the same way as most people, even those who know, aren't too bothered about spaceships making sound).

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

3 hours ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

...Anyway, given that most of us can not even manage to speak languages from nearby nations, how are we going to communicate with them?

Now on that front I think Douglas Adams was inventor of the best solution in the form of the 'Babel fish'. Although he did note that human thought is so primitive that it is actually illegal in some civilisations.

 

Better yet is the thought that only the English could be so tasteless as to play cricket...

[Ozexpatriate]

4 hours ago, jf2682 said:

We see life teaming on earth in the most unusual places, but how can we logically state there has to be life elsewhere.  So, in the absence of proof of life, there isn't any.

Recently scientists have noted spectral evidence of the elements contained in amino acids (the wading pool for DNA) in ejected matter from the Saturnian moon Enceladus. 

 

There's been a lot of hypotheses (so far unproven) regarding the possibility of hydro-thermal vent lifeforms (like those in the deep oceans of Earth) deep below the surface of places like the Jovian moon Europa and Enceladus.

[Ozexpatriate]

3 hours ago, Flying Pig said:

With our current knowledge, we cannot state with certainty that life exists beyond Earth.

This is an accurate statement.

 

I find it interesting how many people want to deal in absolutes when none of us "know" what will happen to us tomorrow.

 

Evidence and mathematics (including the mathematics of probability) indicate the likely answers, which is of course the essence of the Drake equation.

 

Edited November 7, 2019 by Ozexpatriate

[eastglosmog]

2 hours ago, Nick C said:

Exactly. We know the observable universe is 93 billion light-years across, and contains more than 2 trillion galaxies - and therefore around 10^24 stars. Chances are, then, that the number of planets is likely to be similar (not all stars have planets, but many have more than one). That's roughly a trillion planets just in our galaxy.

  

............

I live in hope that one of them is a disc, perched on top of four elephants standing on a giant space turtle!

[Ozexpatriate]

4 minutes ago, eastglosmog said:

I live in hope that one of them is a disc, perched on top of four elephants standing on a giant space turtle!

In an infinity of parallel universes, one of them surely is.

[kevinlms]

9 minutes ago, eastglosmog said:

I live in hope that one of them is a disc, perched on top of four elephants standing on a giant space turtle!

More to the point, what percentage are going to be flat (like Earth!), or round?

[SHMD]

...So, no one can provide a shred of evidence as to whether life exists or not.

Not one iota.

Blurry pics from some, maths from others, etc etc.

Hear say verses numbers.

Blah blah...

 

BUT what I want to now is who keeps moving/hiding things straight after I just put them down?

 

 

Kev.

[Nick C]

19 minutes ago, jf2682 said:

Yes, and aren't we all yearning for positive evidence of life.  I prefer to take the contrary view that without proof, it doesn't exist.

Once again Douglas Adams needs a mention...

Quote

Now, it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some have chosen to see it as the final proof of the NON-existence of God. The argument goes something like this:

"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."

"But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves that You exist, and so therefore, by Your own arguments, You don't. QED."

"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

"Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.

 

[Reorte]

1 hour ago, jf2682 said:

Yes, and aren't we all yearning for positive evidence of life.  I prefer to take the contrary view that without proof, it doesn't exist.

 

The rational approach is to take the view that, based on our knowledge, what is the most probable? Due to the limits of our knowledge there's a very wide variety of equally probable answers, and no sound reason to take any particular view. Note that that's different on saying what you'd like the answer to be.

 

"Without proof it doesn't exist" though dismisses the whole notion of probability.

[jcm@gwr]

Personally I think it's a bit arrogant to suggest that in the vastness

of the Galaxy/Universe we are the only life form to have developed.

[Ozexpatriate]

12 hours ago, Nick C said:

Once again Douglas Adams needs a mention...

Oolon Colluphid had occurred to me earlier.

[Joseph_Pestell]

Do we think that there will be railways (and model railways) on any of these other planets?