UFOs: finally we can accept them as myth and hoax?

[Platapus]

The surest sign of intelligent live out there is that they have not bothered to visit us.




Since it is impossible to prove non-existence, especially in the context of non-earth things, We may never know.


All I know is that I have not seen an alien space craft....yet.


I have also never personally seen a Black Swan for that matter.

[Bilge_Rat]

This is an issue which has always fascinated me and I have looked into it a lot.

At this point, only two things are certain:

1. There is certainly intelligent life out there. According to one estimate I saw, there could be as many as 100,000 inhabited planets in our universe; and

2. There is no proof any of them have ever visited the earth.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Bilge_Rat

This is an issue which has always fascinated me and I have looked into it a lot.

At this point, only two things are certain:

1. There is certainly intelligent life out there. According to one estimate I saw, there could be as many as 100,000 inhabited planets in our universe; and

2. There is no proof any of them have ever visited the earth.

There is nothing certain in any of the two points. Its just guessing and speculation not based on hints or facts.

[Mr Quatro]

Reports of flaming chariots being seen are in the Old Testament of the Holy Bible ... Specially when Elijah was seen leaving in one by his replacement Elisha.

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

They're stealth technology is now obviously far more advanced than in previous decades.

Lol, good one

[Jeff-Groves]

Originally Posted by Platapus

All I know is that I have not seen an alien space craft

Your going to have to define that statement. Pretty sure the French have a few space craft.
Being they would be classified as alien to us in the U.S.A.?
There are alien space craft!

[JU_88]

Anyway 'UFO' doesnt mean aliens, it just means 'dunno what that is'
Only time I've seen a flying saucer was one time in 80s when my mum got really angry with my older brother in the kitchen.
.....luckily it missed him though.

[Reece]

She was obviously watching too many Ninja shows!

[Mr Quatro]

Originally Posted by Platapus

The surest sign of intelligent live out there is that they have not bothered to visit us.

If they're smart enough to travel here ... They are certainly smart enough to live among us ... Body snatchers, men in black can't all be Hollywood

[August]

Thing is the universe is so big that its not unreasonable to assume that life likely exists out there somewhere and it's also obvious that any alien race so advanced that it can travel between the stars could also keep their existence completely hidden from us.



In fact if an alien race were to show themselves it'd probably be because they are getting ready to swat us like the bugs we would be to them. Movie heroes ain't gonna fly up to the mother ship to download a computer virus even if Apple laptop interface is compatible with alien technology.

[u crank]

Originally Posted by August

Thing is the universe is so big that its not unreasonable to assume that life likely exists out there somewhere and it's also obvious that any alien race so advanced that it can travel between the stars could also keep their existence completely hidden from us.

The Great Filter

With no evidence of intelligent life other than ourselves, it appears that the process of starting with a star and ending with "advanced explosive lasting life" must be unlikely. This implies that at least one step in this process must be improbable. Hanson's list, while incomplete, describes the following nine steps in an "evolutionary path" that results in the colonization of the observable universe:

The right star system (including organics and potentially habitable planets)
Reproductive molecules (e.g. RNA)
Simple (prokaryotic) single-cell life
Complex (eukaryotic) single-cell life
Sexual reproduction
Multi-cell life
Tool-using animals with big brains
Where we are now
Colonization explosion

According to the Great Filter hypothesis at least one of these steps—if the list were complete—must be improbable. If it's not an early step (i.e., in our past), then the implication is that the improbable step lies in our future and our prospects of reaching step 9 (interstellar colonization) are still bleak. If the past steps are likely, then many civilizations would have developed to the current level of the human species. However, none appear to have made it to step 9, or the Milky Way would be full of colonies. So perhaps step 9 is the unlikely one ....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter

Another problem is the time line. Since the universe is billions of years old highly advance life forms may have evolved, traveled the cosmos and then disappeared. It's possible that they existed hundreds of millions of years in the past.

See also the 'Fermi paradox'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox

[Bilge_Rat]

Very true, a lot of sci fi writers have run through various scenarios.

For example, assume a highly advanced race had developed space travel 100,000 years ago, visited earth and then disappeared 95,000 years ago, there would likely be no proof they ever came and we would probably never know about them.

100,000 years is a blink of an eye in our 5 billion year old universe.

[mapuc]

After having read Skybird's response I could not help thinking:

If our planet in the entire univers or universes, is the only one with life on it

then the big question is:

Why all this waste ? Why billions and billions of Suns and trillions of planets with no life whatsoever.

Markus

[Skybird]

Life as we understand it, bases on a huge variety of preconditions that must be met, and even if all these preconditions are being met, we do not know if this total meeting of needed preconditions alone already would automatically always trigger the forming of "life". We assume it is like this, but that is just our assumption. We can only say that in our small corner of the total universe, at this point of time of the universe's lifespan, all environmental conditions and what it took to allow life, were met. And so it is no surpise that life exiosts in this corner of the universe - and not in another one. Like it is no surprise that all birds have wings and all fishes can breath underwater.

Maybe life indeed is a very rare, if not even unique, exception from the rule of the material universe being lifeless and unaware of itself. Maybe lifelessness is indeed the norm in the universe.

There are two big horrors man must get along with. The first is the chance of meeting alien, foreign life that is totally different than we are and thw life we know. The other horror is to find out that we are indeed the only ones. And I dare not to judge which one is the bigger horror of the two.

Science cannot deal with the question of "Why?". It deals with the question of "How?". And for the question of "Why?", in the end we have no method to come to an answer or preliminary conclusion, and we have nothing that gives us answers. We shoudkl have the greatness to qdmit that we simp0ly do not kinow, and maybe cannot know. Religions simply sooth the worried mind like a drug would do, by raising claims and illusions - unproven and untestable these claims get raised again and again, and blindly believing them is declared a moral virtue, a "strong faith". But it just is hear-say. Believing is not knowing, but like a child takes comfort from a lifeless teddybear in its arms, many people take comfort from believing in a set of religous claims. Its irrational - still it may be necessary for mental and psychological hygiene and to avoid threating levels of troubled mind, and existential fear. Watch a child sleeping with its favourite cloth pet in its arms - and then tell me the teddybear is useless! It isn't. Although it is just a lifeless teddybear.

We do not know why the universe is there, and where it came from and where it goes at the very end. For us, a concept of there being no start or end, even makes no sense, is unthinkable. The real question to me here is not so much why things are like they are , but the real quesiton is: why is there anything in the first? Why isn'T there simply nothing? Why isn'T there just the total absence of anything?

I doubt that the way the human mind works and is designed to function, it can ever hope to grasp an answer, for it may be so much beyond its reach that we can never hope to reach and understand it. If we woujld, we would no longer be humans, but supoerhuman. Beyond human, that is. Here is where the meaning of Nietzsche's superhumanm must be sought for. We are talking about transformation here. Transcendence, if oyu want. Which can only be had at the cost of goiung beyiond what makes us a "human", an "ego", an "I".

Take your life for what it is. Try to enjoy it. Do not to others what you would not want to be done to you. Live every day as if it were your last. Do not crave for death, but then also do not fear and endlessly try to evade it, for you cannot succeed there. Don't seek salvation in transitory things, see them as coming in and going out pleasures only. If something happens and comes to you, greet it, and if it goes again, farewell it. I think that is all meaning of life there ever will be. I am quite stoic there, I think.

And if one thinks about it - thats quite a lot already.

[Rockstar]

Time and Space make it hard.


Assume an alien life form lives approximately 4 light years away in the Alpha Centauri system. Now lets suppose by some miracle that life form can survive travelling at the speed of light it will take them four of our earth years, no big deal. Say they cant survive that speed but their technology will allow them to travel the 23,514,501,492,734.434 miles at 100,000 miles an hour! Whoopee, that sounds fast but it would still take them something like 26,825,132 of our earth years to get here.

I reckon they would have to place frozen embryos on the craft and hatch the little buggers so they can learn about themselves, culture, purpose and mission destination.

Even if my math isnt right I'd wager big money its still gonna take more time than any life form has to get here