I agree, but interesting stuff happens when using electronics such as what modern (and not so modern) aircraft and ships carry.
NORAD had an interesting case. They detected a large flight of missiles that were not going to land in the USA. They issued some level of alert, just in case.
It turns out that NORAD had detected the Moon, saw it as a large number of missiles that were not going to land in the USA.
Human intelligence had ignored the Moon.
The Captain
wonders what the Lunatics made of it…
…ORIGIN
Middle English: from Old French lunatique, from late Latin lunaticus, from Latin luna ‘moon’ (from the belief that changes of the moon caused intermittent insanity).
I’ll see your SpaceLab high speed target story and raise you the Moon alarming a new BMEWS system that a huge Soviet strike had been launched against North America.
“An investigation soon revealed the cause of the false alarm, which could almost be considered comical had it not nearly lead to nuclear Armageddon. On that tense October day, the brand-new, state of the art, $1.2 billion BMEWS system had detected not a swarm of Soviet missiles, but the Moon rising over Norway.”
I find it interesting that the aliens prefer to show up in the wee hours of the morning, usually on government-owned property in remote deserts. They never pick downtown New York City or downtown Los Angeles at high noon.
It turns out that NORAD had detected the Moon, saw it as a large number of missiles that were not going to land in the USA.
Human intelligence had ignored the Moon.
Not necessarily. When Radar signals are transmitted into space they only stop or reflect when they hit something solid. Having them reflect and return from the moon would while unlikely is certainly possible. Radars work on a variety of discreate frequencies and generally will only pick up the signal from their own transmitter. With so many Radars out there since WWII the clutter has become a problem. When the war ended a large number of the British ASVII radars from Sub Hunting aircraft ended up sold for scrap … that then showed up on ECM sets as being on fishing and patrol boats from foreign nations. }};-@
The first two radars I used operationally where the wonderful British ASV-21 and the horrible US APS-20 that was an air defense and weather Radar turn upside down and installed in the MK-1 Argus.
I was very involved in getting Radar installed in our Sea Kings while working at Base Test and Evaluation flight. I also took the first “Camel Humper”*** to sea on a fisheries patrol which is too long a story for this venue.
*** nick name for the very nice radar because the antenna dome was behind the transmission and it looked like a camel’s hump.
But the probability that that life (lives), whoever and where ever they are? Zeroing on this small insignificant speck of sand that we call Mother Earth?
There’s only been intelligent life on the planet here for 50,000 years…capable of air travel, radar, very limited space travel… out of 15 billion years of the solar system.
The odds of having an equivalent ‘intelligent’ life, thousand of years advanced to have reliable space travel, meeting up with us primitives, is so tiny …it’s not worth worrying about. And their being able to ‘find’ us out of a billion billion billion star systems in just our galaxy, out of a billion billion billion galaxies. All of them hundreds or thousands of light years away.
Our nearest star is 4 light years away. At current speeds it would take us 100 years to get there, 100 years to get back…after you discover there is nothing there.
Our nearest star is 4 light years away. At current speeds it would take us 100 years to get there, 100 years to get back…after you discover there is nothing there.
The probability that there IS ‘life’ out there, somewhere, seems like it would be a given. Likely many times over. Too many possibilities for it to be otherwise.
But the probability that that life (lives), whoever and where ever they are? Zeroing on this small insignificant speck of sand that we call Mother Earth?
Too many zeros after the decimal to type.
But the latter part of that assumes ONE instance of life out there.
I see no basis for that assumption.
Considering the calculations I did to estimate the number of opportunities life had to emerge on earth, in accordance with just one of the several families of theories on how that might have happened (we know it DID happen, but don’t know exactly how), I have to conclude that life emerged on nearly every planet with a water ocean - and more than a few planets that never had a water ocean but do or did have enough water to make it plausible - and maybe some with no water to speak of.
After that it gets complicated. For life on another planet to find its way HERE we need the planet to also have solid surface made of assorted minerals, and the life to survive long enough to crawl out on that solid surface and develop sapience and advanced technology. The planet can’t be too big (Earth is almost too big - not a whole lot larger and it wouldn’t be possible for a chemical rocket to put something in orbit, which kind of crimps plans for going into space) or too small (the important parts of the atmosphere will dissipate before life can get into space).
(I’m not worried about temperature range because the need for water - liquid - already limits that.)
And then we need either an EXTREMELY long-lived species, which significantly slows evolution; colony ships, which won’t be small and will either pass through quickly or stay and make their presence extremely known, but will NOT produce dozens or hundreds of random sightings spread across multiple decades; or some form faster-than-light travel (wormholes would qualify IF they don’t need equipment at the destination).
I always thought this world mad of UFO sightings was interesting. Apparently UFO’s really like the USA . . . .
“world mad”… good one.
But I wouldn’t say they love the USA. Instead I’d say they love the Anglosphere. As I note that Britain and New Zealand, the more densely populated parts of Canada and Australia, and the more English-dominant parts of India and southern Africa are similarly highlighted. Also the formerly-British and tourist-trap areas of the Americas south of the US.
Not sure why Denmark, northern Germany, and the east side of Saudi Arabia glow too.
There’s only been intelligent life on the planet here for 50,000 years…capable of air travel, radar, very limited space travel… out of 15 billion years of the solar system.
A few errors in that.
The solar system is probably less than 5 billion years old - not 15 billion. The universe is circa 15 billion years old.
H. sapiens heidelbergensis (whether the “sapiens” belongs in there is debated, but we know they could interbreed with H. s. neanderthalensis, H. s. sapiens, and H. s. denisova, and that’s good enough for me) was around 700,000 years ago.
In terms of actual ability in those specific technologies, we’re talking less than a century - if we’re talking theoretical ability, we need to go at least several tens of thousands of years in the past and there’s no reason to think we’re going to stop having those abilities tomorrow.
Now there is the issue of explaining why we have so many claims of UFO sightings (and their apparent preference for English-speaking areas) yet so few verifiably-alien contacts. Unless there is the somewhat improbable combination of (a) interstellar travel is so cheap that high-school kids do it to pull pranks on primitive races and (b) there’s an interstellar government trying to enforce a hands-off-the-primitives rule.
“After that it gets complicated. For life on another planet to find its way HERE we need the planet to also have solid surface made of assorted minerals, and the life to survive long enough to crawl out on that solid surface and develop sapience and advanced technology. The planet can’t be too big (Earth is almost too big - not a whole lot larger and it wouldn’t be possible for a chemical rocket to put something in orbit, which kind of crimps plans for going into space) or too small (the important parts of the atmosphere will dissipate before life can get into space).”
In addition, the planet needs an iron core, liquid, to provide a magnetoshere of protection against cosmic and solar radiation. Without that, life on Earth wouldn’t exist. It also needs a planet not subject to massive solar ejections from the sun - a ‘well behaved’ sun - and most aren’t.
As spock might put it - there are very few “M” class planets with oxygen atmospheres, a ‘climate’ and a mild one - liquid water - and the appropriate minerals. Of all the planets in our solar system, only one has survived with ‘life’. Mars liquid core solidified - no protective magnetosphere - atmosphere, if it has one, ripped away by solar winds. Venus? 600F at the surface…
IF, and only if, some civilization invents a ‘warp drive’ if that is even possible, the distances between habitable planets are measured in generations of people. Hundreds or thousands of years. Plus of course, all the matter/anti-matter engines, protective ‘shields’, etc.
Even with warp drive, exploring and finding the one in a billion planet that ‘might’ have life with the right conditions - would take untold extra generations - or ten thousand ships ‘exploring’ the universe…
With everyone now carrying a hand held picture taker…seen any good UFO pics lately? Hmmm… with all the UFO landings, abductions, it makes you wonder.
warrl The probability that there IS ‘life’ out there, somewhere, seems like it would be a given. Likely many times over. Too many possibilities for it to be otherwise.
But the probability that that life (lives), whoever and where ever they are? Zeroing on this small insignificant speck of sand that we call Mother Earth?
Too many zeros after the decimal to type.
But the latter part of that assumes ONE instance of life out there.
I see no basis for that assumption.
OK. I guess. Just too many zeros in the numbers. Again, I guess!
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