UFOs -- Something's Coming

“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.

t.

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Has everyone here forgotten we have pyramids? And you don’t believe in aliens? SHEESH! :smiley:

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Has everyone here forgotten we have pyramids? And you don’t believe in aliens? SHEESH! :smiley:

Have tried to get any tile work
done lately. I think all those aliens from Mexico got in their spaceships and went home.

Cheers

Qazulight

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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!

Has everyone here forgotten we have pyramids?

True dat! The E.T.’s needed something to store their grain in, of course.

Pete

"Has everyone here forgotten we have pyramids? "

So? Just a lot of work to build one. Folks know how it was done. Nothing magic.

t.

Ok folks, UFO is so 20th century.

The cool people call them UAPs, Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.

Neil deGrasse Tyson has 2 interesting comments on UAP (yes, I’m that cool).

  1. Why don’t we have a clear picture of them given that just about everyone on the planet is walking around with a high definition camera in their pocket?

  2. It’s probably just a software glitch in the electronic tracking equipment.

Well, the Pentagon shot #2 down in their exceedingly boring and over-hyped 2021 UAP report to Congress. The only thing interesting in the report (IMNSHO) was the fact that the Pentagon acknowledged they are tracking something and they’re tracking them on multiple tracking devices at the same time.

So just what are they tracking? Many pilots (military and commercial), usually serious and sober individuals, are seeing something and are finally being encouraged to report sitings without jeopardizing their careers.

A new type of weather phenomenon never before detected? Highly unlikely.

Off planet space craft? Also highly unlikely given that vast distances that separate us, just within our galaxy. Don’t even start me on intergalactic distances (although if we stick around for 4.5 billion years or so the Andromeda Galaxy and the Milky Way will start to merge. Better plan to be out of town when that occurs.)

Then again, look at the strides we clever monkeys have made. 200 years ago the fastest you could travel was on the back of a horse. It took weeks, if not months, to travel from Europe to America. Hard to imagine the advances well make if we manage to survive 200 more years, let alone a thousand years. Especially with advanced AI. And it’s certainly possible that some alien species has survived for many thousands of years. Maybe they figured out how to bend space time.

While I’m absolutely certain life exists elsewhere in our universe, I’m a skeptic about them reaching Mother Earth. One thing I’m certain of, when alien life sets foot on Earth, they will be the first intelligent life form to do so. :slight_smile:

Ok, so that leaves the possibility of something of human origin.

If so, most likely something top secret (skunk works) from the US. Who else has the resources? Maybe China. Less likely Russia or Israel.

Plus, it seems most recordings are from US military ships and planes. What better way to test new technology than against the best tracking devices on the planet. Which also explains Neil’s first question about why we don’t have civilian pictures of them.

Lastly, it has been noted that the UAPs that have been tracked making maneuvers that would kill a human. Which brings up the possibility of remote or advanced AI control of the craft (especially AI if it’s alien, given the time it would take to travel).

Anyway, some random ramblings from someone who’s curiosity is piqued by UAPs.

AW

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I can’t remember where I read it but I once read a mathematical analysis like that and the big question was why we are not up to our eyeballs in aliens.

The key was the billions of years that intelligent life has had to spread once it emerged.

The conclusion was that traveling faster than light was likely impossible which makes interstellar so impractical that it is next to nonexistent.

Without being able to expand beyond a single solar system the lifespan of an intelligent civilization was problematic since there are so many things that can cause it to permanently collapse over a time span of a million years when they are not expanding.

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The Fermi Paradox (where is everybody?) and the Drake equation (product of probabilities needed for communicative life) frame the E.T. discussion, but do not give much indication of what is out there.

The Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (a US Navy program) was unable to identify 143 objects spotted between 2004 and 2021. Less than 10 a year. Maybe the Air Force is testing something.

Project Blue Book (a US Air Force program) was unable to identify 701 sightings between 1947 to 1969. About 30 a year. Maybe weather or new technology.

There were over 10,000 UFO reported sightings every year since 1990, mostly in the US. Most of these are probably noise.

Whatever it is, and some of the stories are mysterious, the possibly credible reports are rare, and confused reports are common. Science often finds rare events (e.g. colliding black holes), but it takes effort and time, and studying the brain might be more rewarding.

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But if Navy pilots are reporting this stuff and potentially putting their careers at risk, maybe there’s something there?

It’s the exact opposite. If a Navy pilot sees something and doesn’t report it, their career could be at risk. Reporting something, that doesn’t eventually become verified, happens all the time, and is expected.

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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.

So you’re telling me there is a chance? :wink:

Desert (ET phone me) Dave

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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.

A billion billion billion… that would be
1,000,000,000 000,000,000 000,000,000 stars.

More common estimates from astronomers run from
100,000,000,000 to
400,000,000,000 stars.

You’re positing a similarly large number of galaxies in the universe, whereas the scientists suggest the number is
2,000,000,000,000 galaxies.

Also, not all the stars are "hundreds or thousands of light-years away". An estimated 800 stars, including at least 50 Sun-like stars, are within a mere 100 light-years of the Sun. Assuming consistently even distribution (don't make this assumption while engaging in interstellar travel!), within 149 light-years - so you can't even round it up to 200 and barely qualify for "hundreds of light-years" - there would be approximately 2,650 stars, of which approximately 165 would be Sun-like.

And they don't exactly have to find US. If you hypothesize (for the sake of discussion only, not suggesting this actually exists) another inhabited planet with a level of technology *exactly* equal to ours, WE TODAY could detect it at a range of up to 30 light-years, maybe further. I would assume we'll be able to do better than that by the time we're plausibly able to send ships to other stars.

So you’re telling me there is a chance? :wink:

If the probability is not zero, no matter how many billions, YES!

The Captain
does not like the odds…

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