Do you believe in UFO's?

[MooneyDriver78]

For those that ask why they would come here, do you not think we as a human race would make an attempt to visit somewhere that we believe life existed on? If we would try to visit another planet with life then why wouldn’t they want to visit us? Maybe we are the first or closest planet to them that they found capable of sustaining life. We don’t need to be equals from a technology standpoint just to be interesting. There are people on earth that study bugs and insects. Do we question them as to why they do that even though humans are more intelligent and technologically advanced than a grasshopper? They have their own reasons and it’s not for technological advancement. Aliens could view humans or life on earth the same way.

Maybe we’re a terraforming experiment.

It would explain the diversity of life and explosions of species after extinction events.

 

[Huckster79]

I think if we even try to grasp the size of the universe which is infinite and expanding- which is a very odd concept, if it goes forever wth is it expanding into… but that is my understanding of where astrophysicists are in their current understanding of the cosmos. Well then that makes it all but assured there must be. I know some even beleive the seeds of life arrived here via asteroid or metiorite (forget which one) then yes life of many different evolutionary phases exist elsewhere.

 

[X3 Skier]

I wonder what personal pronoun an alien/UFO Driver would use.

Cheers

 

[GaryM]

Which show was that? Twilight Zone, Outer Limits……

Twilight Zone. One of the great episodes. I won't give away the plot, it's still worth watching after all these years.

 

[Huckster79]

I wonder what personal pronoun an alien/UFO Driver would use.

Cheers

lets hope if there are other advanced civilizations they have evolved to a point of maturity that their respective populations of any persuasions aren’t whipped up into such petty frenzies

 

[SixPapaCharlie]

You telling me the Nazca lines were NOT intended for aerial viewing in 500 BC?
We have been visited and the Aliens have decided we are not worth the return trip



What the heck are these Mayan statues of?



Also they built the pyramids.

 

[steingar]

Again there's no reason they would do that when there are plenty of other ways to accomplish getting rid of humans without destroying the rest of the planet and having to wait years for it to return to normal.

Most other ways assume an intimate knowledge of our biology. Asteroids are easy, cheap and all purpose. It's what I'd use. Bomb the hell out of the place and come back a thousand years later.

 

[EdFred]

Most other ways assume an intimate knowledge of our biology. Asteroids are easy, cheap and all purpose. It's what I'd use. Bomb the hell out of the place and come back a thousand years later.

This is why you teach at ohio state and not a real university.

A thousand years? Please. For geology and cosmology that's a short time, but for a species looking for resources, not so much.

 

[EdFred]

Why would an alien (sorry, undocumented space traveler) come here?

Any peaceful civilization so advanced that they have mastered inter-stellar space travel would necessarily have technologies that allowed them to know everything about us long before making the trip here. No need to probe anyone’s orifices.

I see no reason at all for such creatures to want to have anything to do with humanity; we offer no compelling incentive for such contact. Study our Ways to learn from us? Wisdom from “The View”, perhaps? Conflict resolution techniques from the UN?

They would likely view us with distaste. They would very likely think that they might be able to help us at some point in our distant future, if we manage to survive long enough as a human race.

At this point in our very short history, though, they would be unlikely to view us as being a worthy “project” for societal transformation through using the benefits of their advanced technologies.

In my humble opinion, our first encounter with undocumented space travelers will unfold quickly and without warning, and will be extremely unpleasant. They will be to us as we are to bacteria. They will not be peaceful. They will not be friendly. They will view us as an inconsequential nuisance to be eliminated so that they might use the Earth as a resource to be exploited for their economic benefit.

Then again, they might also view humanity as a resource to be exploited for our caloric benefit.

The ultimate example of the old adage, “careful what you wish for”.

There was a good ST:TNG episode that addressed this: Who Watches the Watchers.

 

[steingar]

This is why you teach at ohio state and not a real university.

A thousand years? Please. For geology and cosmology that's a short time, but for a species looking for resources, not so much.

Asteroids wouldn't sterilize the planet, they'd just get rid of the megafauna and flora. A thousand years would be plenty for microfauna and microflora to bounce back to support the biosphere. It would take far far longer for adaptive radiation to produce a replacement biota.

 

[Kenny Taylor]

Or they could just wait 100 years and see if we exterminate ourselves. Saves a trip and a load of chemicals.

Safe bet.

 

[Morgan3820]

Why would an alien (sorry, undocumented space traveler) come here?

Any peaceful civilization so advanced that they have mastered inter-stellar space travel would necessarily have technologies that allowed them to know everything about us long before making the trip here. No need to probe anyone’s orifices.

I see no reason at all for such creatures to want to have anything to do with humanity; we offer no compelling incentive for such contact. Study our Ways to learn from us? Wisdom from “The View”, perhaps? Conflict resolution techniques from the UN?

They would likely view us with distaste. They would very likely think that they might be able to help us at some point in our distant future, if we manage to survive long enough as a human race.

At this point in our very short history, though, they would be unlikely to view us as being a worthy “project” for societal transformation through using the benefits of their advanced technologies.

In my humble opinion, our first encounter with undocumented space travelers will unfold quickly and without warning, and will be extremely unpleasant. They will be to us as we are to bacteria. They will not be peaceful. They will not be friendly. They will view us as an inconsequential nuisance to be eliminated so that they might use the Earth as a resource to be exploited for their economic benefit.

Then again, they might also view humanity as a resource to be exploited for our caloric benefit.

The ultimate example of the old adage, “careful what you wish for”.

Maybe they can’t get good barbecue where they are at. The guy behind me at Hard Eight at DFW drove from the Keys just for some great BBQ.

 

[OneCharlieTango]

This and other similar thoughts have it dead backwards:

I think a civilization advanced enough to perfect interstellar travel would be wise enough to avoid this bad neighborhood.

Look at how the First World sees the Third, and apply that to the Advanced Aliens.

They’d see us as backward, quaint. Once the explorers sent photos, those at home would use us to berate their own way of life. They’d point to our relative lack of sophistication as something to be aspired to. We’d be the Noble Savages!

 

[steingar]

They’d see us as backward, quaint. Once the explorers sent photos, those at home would use us to berate their own way of life. They’d point to our relative lack of sophistication as something to be aspired to. We’d be the Noble Savages!

I tend to think about how the Europeans treated the aboriginals in South America and Africa.

 

[Sac Arrow]

I tend to think about how the Europeans treated the aboriginals in South America and Africa.

How did they treat them? And how did they get from Australia to South America and Africa?

 

[Sac Arrow]

I got to fly over this gem for a while. Vacaville, CA, 2007. A group of high schoolers fessed up to making them.

Well that didn't work. Oh well, Google crop circles over Fairfield for a picture.

 

[luvflyin]

How did they treat them? And how did they get from Australia to South America and Africa?

It's a generic term, but yeah, we mostly think of it as the Australian ones. "inhabiting or existing in a land from the earliest times or from before the arrival of colonists; indigenous"

 

[luvflyin]

Yo, @Jim K , you gots crops and tractors and stuff. Get to work. Carve us a P O A.

 

[luvflyin]

I got to fly over this gem for a while. Vacaville, CA, 2007. A group of high schoolers fessed up to making them.

Well that didn't work. Oh well, Google crop circles over Fairfield for a picture.

The caption says 'bored teens try to claim crop circles'

 

[DaleB]

I tend to think about how the Europeans treated the aboriginals in South America and Africa.

Or how the US government, particularly under Andrew Jackson, treated the Indian population...

 

[steingar]

How did they treat them? And how did they get from Australia to South America and Africa?

Conquered, killed, and enslaved. Their introduced diseases certainly helped.

 

[Dana]

There are people on earth that study bugs and insects.

And there are people who squish them...

 

[Daleandee]

kmacht said: ↑
There are people on earth that study bugs and insects.

And there are people who squish them...

Then there's folks like me that collect them on the leading edges of the airplane ...

 

[DaleB]

I think pretty much all of the possible scenarios have been explored in fiction.
The benevolent advanced civilization that wants to help us...
The benevolent advanced civilization that wants to study us out of curiosity, but not help us...
The advanced civilization that tries to brush us aside and suck the planet dry...
The advanced civilization that arrives to enslave and use the planet and its population for {food, water, resources, labor}
and on and on...

Let's look at it from our own perspective. Let's say that we reach a state of technological and social advancement that utterly removes disease, poverty, hunger, and resource limitations and we achieve some sort of paradise on Earth. Let's ignore the fact that sizable portions of the population would still want to kill everyone else for various reasons, even if there were no resources over which we were competing.

So now we can all live a lot longer, even the formerly impoverished starving populations. That will soon mean we've got to branch out and find more places to live. Let's assume just for fun that we have also developed or discovered a means of interstellar travel. Obviously, Earth-type planets hospitable to out particular flavor of life would be preferred. But every one we find is going to have an existing indigenous population, pretty much guaranteed... where life can exist, it will. So now we're back to square one; despite our lofty intentions, all the places we want to live are probably already occupied by people who want to stay there and aren't wild about sharing.

Circle of life, baby. Unless we figure out terraforming to turn less desirable real estate into prime real estate, someone's not going to be too happy with the outcome.

 

[EdFred]

Obviously, Earth-type planets hospitable to out particular flavor of life would be preferred. But every one we find is going to have an existing indigenous population, pretty much guaranteed... where life can exist, it will. So now we're back to square one; despite our lofty intentions, all the places we want to live are probably already occupied by people who want to stay there and aren't wild about sharing.

Circle of life, baby. Unless we figure out terraforming to turn less desirable real estate into prime real estate, someone's not going to be too happy with the outcome.

That assumes that all intelligent/sentient/sapient life evolves at the same speed/faster than it did here, and that the star system it is in is the same age as ours. If so, we've only been sapient for what, at most a million-ish years, and maybe as little as 50,000 years depending on your definitions. But it took pretty much all of the 4 billion years from the start of the solar system to get there. A window of a million years over 4 billion years is the last 21 seconds of a 24 hour day. If we get to that planet at 11:30pm it's probably ripe for us to do with as we want.

 

[DaleB]

That assumes that all intelligent/sentient/sapient life evolves at the same speed/faster than it did here, and that the star system it is in is the same age as ours. If so, we've only been sapient for what, at most a million-ish years, and maybe as little as 50,000 years depending on your definitions. But it took pretty much all of the 4 billion years from the start of the solar system to get there. A window of a million years over 4 billion years is the last 21 seconds of a 24 hour day. If we get to that planet at 11:30pm it's probably ripe for us to do with as we want.

Maybe. But our star system isn't the oldest by far, and we have no idea how fast other civilizations have developed. Just our own galaxy has stars over 3 times the age of our own, and our galaxy isn't the oldest either... we have no idea how many civilizations have come and gone.

 

[EdFred]

Maybe. But our star system isn't the oldest by far, and we have no idea how fast other civilizations have developed. Just our own galaxy has stars over 3 times the age of our own, and our galaxy isn't the oldest either... we have no idea how many civilizations have come and gone.

...or if any.

 

[DaleB]

...or if any.

Quite true. Given the enormity of the numbers involved, I suspect there are things that have happened. Civilizations and empires come and gone, the whole shebang. But we'll likely never know. I'm almost certain you or I, or my kids and grandkids, will never know for sure.

 

[Sac Arrow]

The caption says 'bored teens try to claim crop circles'
View attachment 109586

I almost should change my vote.

But yeah, I was enroute from KSAC to KHAF when I saw those, and laughed. Somebody must be really bored. It hadn't hit the news yet. Of course it was some bored teenagers. But I thought it was pretty funny. The farmer, probably not so much.

 

[steingar]

You're actually getting at the Fermi Paradox. Our solar system is quite young, as things go. Logic would suggest that life started on some distant world long, long ago. Presumably a sentient species like ours would develop space travel, and would set up some galaxy wide civilization that would leave something visible thus on Earth. That has never happened.

This gives rise to theories of why not. It is possible that there is some "great barrier" that prevent sentients from establishing space-faring civilizations, the speed of light comes quickly to mind. It could be that the great barrier is something we'll encounter in the future, something that every sentient ever evolved encounters. Not a pleasant thought.

Could be we've passed the great barrier already, and we're the first to do so. Multicellularity, sentience, language, it could be that we're the first species to do any or all of these.

 

[DaleB]

You're actually getting at the Fermi Paradox. Our solar system is quite young, as things go. Logic would suggest that life started on some distant world long, long ago. Presumably a sentient species like ours would develop space travel, and would set up some galaxy wide civilization that would leave something visible thus on Earth. That has never happened.

This gives rise to theories of why not. It is possible that there is some "great barrier" that prevent sentients from establishing space-faring civilizations, the speed of light comes quickly to mind. It could be that the great barrier is something we'll encounter in the future, something that every sentient ever evolved encounters. Not a pleasant thought.

Could be we've passed the great barrier already, and we're the first to do so. Multicellularity, sentience, language, it could be that we're the first species to do any or all of these.

Or it could be that the galaxy is so huge, they just never got around to our little corner of it. Or Earth was too young to be hospitable when it happened. Or it all happened, but in other galaxies -- there are an awful lot of them. Or it could just be that the "great barrier" proves, either by design or by accident, that good fences make good neighbors.

 

[Kenny Phillips]

Considering the definition, I've seen UFO's. I saw something, I didn't know what it was. It was far enough away, it could have been a heli, a glider, any number of aircraft. So it was unidentified.

Now, what's the real question?

It was an errant birthday balloon; I saw it from my Skyhawk.

 

[GaryM]

In at least one sci-fi book I’ve read the aliens just drop some chemical in the atmosphere and then return 100 years later. No humans, everything else thumbs up

Was it CO2?

 

[steingar]

Or it could be that the galaxy is so huge, they just never got around to our little corner of it. Or Earth was too young to be hospitable when it happened. Or it all happened, but in other galaxies -- there are an awful lot of them. Or it could just be that the "great barrier" proves, either by design or by accident, that good fences make good neighbors.

All possible. But it is hard to accept that a galaxy-wide civilization wouldn't leave something behind that we could see in a telescope. We've seen to the farthest corners of the visible universe and seen naught.

 

[RangeRider]

And not one person has considered the possibility that these objects are indigenous to earth. Amazing.

 

[GaryM]

All possible. But it is hard to accept that a galaxy-wide civilization wouldn't leave something behind that we could see in a telescope. We've seen to the farthest corners of the visible universe and seen naught.

They'd have to build something staggeringly large and luminous for us to see it with a telescope. What we are seeing at the farthest corners of the visible universe are mainly galaxies or massive stars. It would take some pretty intrepid builders to construct something on that scale.

Even the evidence for 'nearby' exoplanets is nearly always indirect; a wobble detected in a star's orbit, or periodic dimming of the light when the planet transits. Only a few have been imaged directly, and they are gas giants that appear to us as little more than dots.

 

[Daleandee]

Here ya go ...

 

[DaleB]

All possible. But it is hard to accept that a galaxy-wide civilization wouldn't leave something behind that we could see in a telescope. We've seen to the farthest corners of the visible universe and seen naught.

The improvements in our ability to see into space has come over the past century have been stunning. That said, we've still only seen tiny bits of the visible universe at extremely low resolution. We really can't even get a decent view of things in our own solar system without sending spacecraft to have a look. At this point we're like a kid with a crystal radio and a pair of binoculars, trying to see what's on Mars or Jupiter.

It's a really, really, REALLY big universe out there... and it could be that there are galaxy-wide civilizations, just not in our galaxy.

 

[Kenny Taylor]

It is possible that there is some "great barrier" that prevent sentients from establishing space-faring civilizations

South Park answered this one. We failed the space cash test and forever got shut out from the rest of the universe.

 

[Salty]

Quite true. Given the enormity of the numbers involved, I suspect there are things that have happened. Civilizations and empires come and gone, the whole shebang. But we'll likely never know. I'm almost certain you or I, or my kids and grandkids, will never know for sure.

The whole “the universe is so big and so old the odds are high that there are more species out there” thesis ignores the fact that there are also an infinite number of things that will never happen, therefore you can use the same logic that it’s highly unlikely for it to happen. Don’t think too much about that. You’ve been warned.