Do you believe in ETs?

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http://science.howstuffworks.com/warp-speed3.htm

*punches the desk* This arrogance, and rudeness is exactly why I avoid this forum 97% of the time! Let me explain one of my experiances again. Sorry, but this does get very frustrating after many rounds.

The first one my sister pointed out TO ME! I was busy at the dinner table, scribbling something and didn't want to go to the window. "What is that?" There is was on the horizon!
It was a gargantuan balloon, that glowed red like digital clock numbers.
Not shaped like numbers. I'm not that insanly stupid.
It had this bottom part that was moveing around strangly. Mind you, we could only see it on the horizon.
There was no reflection in the window. The window was open, because the swamp cooler cooled off nothing!
We have, all.... our... lives...
Lived under the flight path of airplanes....... "sigh'
Wells would sometimes catch fire, and so would the colorado forest we have a view of.
We had a view of the city, and the horizon, and the air port, and the mountains of Colorado, and sometimes the Arazona mountains.
We had a road before us that cars were always going back and forth.
Every year, not during the season we saw it in particular, there was a balloon festival, and we watched these balloons go toward Arazona, at night, they do not glow that brightly, ON the horizon this thing was! What kind of balloon was it?
It was also on the way to Ship rock, which we also had a great view of. Plenty of space to land out there.
Star treck the next generation was playing a rerun, and it was 12 pm. or so.
I went to get the camera and it was gone very fast, gone by looking outside and through the window.
I told my Dad, and like you "Oh a gas well just caught on fire!"
Ok then..

Last edited by LiendaBalla on 29 May 2010, 6:05 pm, edited 11 times in total.

Given your apparent sensibilities to blunt statements opposed to your views, I'd say that's a wise decision.

Big, round, glowing red thing at the horizon. I smiled.

Anyways, when seeing something new and strange, it's hard to know where it came from. It's safe to say that it's more likely to be from an unfamiliar place than from a familiar place. Yet, the harder that journey would have been, the more unlikely it is.

I am one, and I believe in me.

My ancestors going eight generations back were from Sirius 6. Fortunately they had a genome that was compatible with the native planet earth genome so they were able to settle down and marry into with the locals. The last time someone from my ancestral planet came to earth was in 1908 over Tunguska. The outcome was not happy.

ruveyn

Oh I heard about that. There was a big blow up over it, wasnt there? It was in all the papers. People make such a fuss when strangers come to town.

This kind of logic only works if we assume that these ET's are not more advanced than us, which is a ridiculous assumption. This also makes the assumption that our current level of physics and technology is about as advanced as we'll ever get, which is equally ridiculous. It's akin to a nineteenth century man saying that we'll never be able to fly in airplanes because science says it's impossible. If they're more advanced than us, there is no way for us to know how technologically advanced they would be and what they would be technically capable of. A million years could be like five minutes to them. My point is that if we assume that technologically advanced aliens exist somewhere - which is likely a certainty - we can't make comparisions based on our own physics.

It's rather reasonable to assume extra terrestrials exist somewhere out there. But have they come here to puny old Earth? That's more debatable.

I really don't know. I haven't experience anything myself to lead me to believe in such. I don't think ti would be impossible. but it's improbable. It would take a lot to cover the vast distances in space and i would imagine only a tiny fraction of the intelligent ETs out there would be capable. Would they realistically have any interest in coming here or even finding us? Even though we think highly of our little speck in the universe, it would be damn hard to find if anyone was looking for it specifically. Our radio transmissions are only decipherable so far out into space before they they get lost in background radiation and would still take a huge amount of time for any signal from us to reach a nearby star system and be received.

Are people's abduction tales true? I really have no idea. Some people do make this crap up though and it's only been around in the last hundred years or so since science fiction came about.

Thank you. It amazes me how people limit every possibility discussed in PPR to Einstein's physics, as if the next millenia wouldn't bring discoveries that would circumvent that somehow.

It's probable aliens are somewhere in the universe, but they probably never visited Earth. Still, UFOs without an explanation pose intriguing problems.

So there should be no limit, whatsoever? What else can we do but base our ideas on what we know now. I certainly won't place any value in future discoveries, because there's no telling what those discoveries entail and discussions involving such would be entirely pointless.

Then by extension, the entire discussion on whether technologically advanced aliens are visiting us must be pointless too, as the subject is highly speculative to begin with.

I hear this whole ET vs no ET argument often. One of my most common arguments is evolution. Some traits are more suited for an environment than others. The ones that aren't die and the ones that are pass the traits one. This process is started by simple chemical reactions turning into more and more complex ones. To deny that life elsewhere is to assume the laws of physics only apply on earth. I'm not talking in terms of statistics, this is a scientific reasoning. It is testable and verifiable. There are no odds involved. Either you believe water is hydrogen and oxygen or you don't. I've never heard anyone say that there is an eighty percent chance water couldn't exist without zinc. Life must exist elsewhere because the laws of physics dictate it, not because there is a ninety nine percent chance.

As to whether or not they visit earth, I believe so, not because I like the thought, but because by the same reasoning as above, they likely originated in our own star system. Life elsewhere should actually be fairly common, and a lot more domestic than we think.

We can acknowledge that we don't know everything. We can admit that we've advanced over time, and will probably continue to advance, and some of our discoveries will supplant our previous belief, or present alternatives. These are possibilities we're discussing here, not dogma. I never said I could read the future. I do apologize though if that's how I came across.



And most discussions with you are. Sigh. You're basically saying since we don't know exactly what's going to happen in the future, we shouldn't have a discussion about it, nor should we even begin to question conventional notions, for any reason. I see. Thanks for responding!

There is a very good reason why ETs do not visit us or visit us often. We are too far away from where they live. If ETs are space faring they have the same physical laws and limits we do, among which is the speed of light.

ruveyn