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Blacksword View Drop Down

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Posted: January 28 2015 at 10:33

TeleStrat wrote:

I agree with you Blacksword about the government keeping something like that a secret.

If there was such a place as Area 51 and if there were three alien bodies discovered at a crash site the government would almost have to keep it a secret for reasons stated above.

In a situation like that people cannot be trusted to act reasonably or responsibly. I'm sorry, they just can't.

By the way Walton Street, my favorite tennis shoes are my Chuck Taylor All Stars high tops in camouflage.

I think Area 51 is real enough. The bit about the dead aliens I'm sure is non sense. Probably just a test centre for new aviation technology.

Ultimately bored by endless ecstasy!

Walton Street View Drop Down

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Posted: January 28 2015 at 10:19

i have 30 pairs of converse, several different colours ..it's all I've worn since i was a little kid

(some of them in the past were not brand name but they were always sneakers)

"I know one thing: that I know nothing"

- SpongeBob Socrates

TeleStrat

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Posted: January 28 2015 at 10:05

I agree with you Blacksword about the government keeping something like that a secret.

If there was such a place as Area 51 and if there were three alien bodies discovered at a crash site the government would almost have to keep it a secret for reasons stated above.

In a situation like that people cannot be trusted to act reasonably or responsibly. I'm sorry, they just can't.

By the way Walton Street, my favorite tennis shoes are my Chuck Taylor All Stars high tops in camouflage.

Walton Street View Drop Down

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Posted: January 28 2015 at 08:59

I have purple tennis shoes.

I don't believe that ETs have been here - or are capable of doing so

I think there has to be some forms of life out there somewhere but I don't believe anyone has popped in yet.

"I know one thing: that I know nothing"

- SpongeBob Socrates

Blacksword View Drop Down

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Posted: January 28 2015 at 08:42

TeleStrat wrote:

I have often wondered what would happen if an alien visitation was confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Regardless of whether it was a more recent visit or evidence of one a million years ago (suppose a crashed alien spacecraft was discovered in a melting glacier - thank you global warming) the impact on society would have to be overwhelming.

What would happen in the religious communities since, as far as I know, most do not believe in the possibility of life on other planets? In fact, many Christians I know (have known) get offended if you even mention aliens.

And then there are various wacko groups around the world and who knows how they would react. Years back when the comet was visible I recall a group in Southern California (wearing purple tennis shoes no less) committing mass suicide. They believed that there was an alien spacecraft in the comet's tail and their suicide would somehow transport them aboard the craft.

Would groups of crazies roam the streets like looters do after a natural disaster?

And finally, what would governments around the world do since their biggest fear is to lose control of their people.

Yeah the crazies would all come out I reckon. Beardy wierdos, with bad personal hygeine and personality disporders. The impact on our societies could indeed be huge, that's why I've always believed that if there was any way to cover up a visitation rather than share the momentus news with the masses, the authorities would want to keep it on the down low.

Can you imagine the impact if visitors from another world came here cklaiming to be our creators and showed us blueprints of the planets initial designs? Religion would fall apart. We'd all go to pieces and mankind would collectively vanish up it's own hole. See my posts in the 'deep thinking' thread...

Ultimately bored by endless ecstasy!

TeleStrat

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Posted: January 27 2015 at 23:43

I have often wondered what would happen if an alien visitation was confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Would groups of crazies roam the streets like looters do after a natural disaster?

And finally, what would governments around the world do since their biggest fear is to lose control of their people.

TeleStrat

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Posted: January 25 2015 at 21:03

Argonaught wrote:

^ I hope that any hypothetical alien race with interstellar travel technology would be so advanced that there would be no need for them to loot and enslave us. Unless they do such things for fun.

As for our own space tech, well, I agree with you completely. We simply do not have means of propulsion, suitable for human interplanetary travel. I'd argue that a reed raft or a dug-out canoe is better suited for sailing around the world than any human spacecraft for traveling to Mars.

Look what happened in our world when explorers discovered races of people that were considerably less advanced.

As far as our space exploration is concerned, if there is no possibility of discovering something like warp speed sometime in the future then we are destined to stay in our own backyard, so to speak.

I think the key to deep space travel may be in worm holes that connect to other parts of the universe.

(but, then again, I've been awake since 3:00 am this morning so I may say anything).

Argonaught View Drop Down

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Posted: January 25 2015 at 19:44

^ I hope that any hypothetical alien race with interstellar travel technology would be so advanced that there would be no need for them to loot and enslave us. Unless they do such things for fun.

Edited by Argonaught - January 25 2015 at 19:54

TeleStrat

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Posted: January 25 2015 at 16:39

Looking at the bigger picture, our space exploration is in the infant stage.

If earth was ever visited by beings from another part of the galaxy (or universe) then their technology would be light years ahead of ours.

I would see them coming here as a possible threat.

Remember the book "To Serve Mankind".

Toaster Mantis View Drop Down

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Posted: January 22 2015 at 14:30

On a related note...

"The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook

Toaster Mantis View Drop Down

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Posted: January 22 2015 at 06:05

I think that's because it was declassified as a MOGUL Project crash a long time ago.

"The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook

Svetonio

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Posted: January 22 2015 at 01:28

U.S. Air Force released the classified documents about UFO, but nothing about the Roswell incident: http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/video/classified-ufo-documents-released/vi-AA8s2F0?ocid=U219DHP

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Posted: November 06 2014 at 09:09

The most popular explanations for Rendlesham are actually the misidentified lighthouse and a cover-up of a nuclear weapons leak, the former would cast some pretty damning doubt on the soldiers stationed there and the latter even worse. Associating it with UFO crashes would basically make it kryptonite to the "serious press".

I'm kind of surprised Nick Redfern didn't mention either, though out of the theories he mentioned I'm only familiar with the Soviet spy satellite theory.

"The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook

dr wu23

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Posted: November 06 2014 at 07:56

Toaster Mantis wrote:

Familiar with that Shag Harbour incident mentioned in the page you linked, one of the most curious UFO sightings though I imagined it was just a UFO crashing into the water rather than doubling as a USO. Wouldn't surprise me if it was some secret military project or spy satellite thing the relevant authorities used as a cover story. That was a popular conspiracy theory about the Rendlesham Forest UFO sighting before the likelihood dawned that it might just have been a lighthouse misidentified by drunk and confused soldiers taking a walk during a Christmas Party.

Speaking of Rendlesham, it's still a bit unclear exactly what happened though if this new article for Mysterious Universe by Nick Redfern is any indicator. I'm not exactly convinced but it does look like other cover-up theories that still had nothing to do with alien spaceships have been thrown around, mostly revolving around secret military technology and crashed Soviet satellites. More likely than aliens if you ask me, but like I say I am still not convinced.

Shag Harbour and Rendlesham are both interesting cases. Something obviously happened in both cases but was it 'otherworldly'?

The Shag case was an object seen underwater that allegedly 'crashed' or went into the harbor that was then followed and searched for by govt officials. Could very easily have been a govt project of some kind trying to recover a military object.

After years of reading about Rendlesham/Bentwaters my feeling is that it was some kind of 'psy ops' exercise to test soldiers reactions to an alleged ufo encounter.

One does nothing yet nothing is left undone.
Haquin

Toaster Mantis View Drop Down

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Posted: November 06 2014 at 03:35

Familiar with that Shag Harbour incident mentioned in the page you linked, one of the most curious UFO sightings though I imagined it was just a UFO crashing into the water rather than doubling as a USO. Wouldn't surprise me if it was some secret military project or spy satellite thing the relevant authorities used as a cover story. That was a popular conspiracy theory about the Rendlesham Forest UFO sighting before the likelihood dawned that it might just have been a lighthouse misidentified by drunk and confused soldiers taking a walk during a Christmas Party.

Speaking of Rendlesham, it's still a bit unclear exactly what happened though if this new article for Mysterious Universe by Nick Redfern is any indicator. I'm not exactly convinced but it does look like other cover-up theories that still had nothing to do with alien spaceships have been thrown around, mostly revolving around secret military technology and crashed Soviet satellites. More likely than aliens if you ask me, but like I say I am still not convinced.

Edited by Toaster Mantis - November 06 2014 at 05:40

"The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook

dr wu23

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Posted: November 05 2014 at 21:21

Toaster Mantis wrote:

You've heard of UFOs, but have you heard of USOs? Apparently they're a thing outside that movie The Abyss...

http://www.crystalinks.com/usos.html

An unidentified submerged object, or USO, is any object or optical or mechanical detection phenomenon of unknown origin observed under water that remains unidentified even after thorough investigation. This particular use of the acronym should not be confused with USO, the popular abbreviation of the United Services Organization. The maritime analog to UFOs, or unidentified flying objects, unidentified submerged objects are often seen by those who study unidentified flying objects as a related phenomenon (ufologists). Likewise, many sightings of USOs constituting "typical" UFOs emerging from the water are seen as a subset of the latter rather than of the former.

Edited by dr wu23 - November 05 2014 at 21:22

One does nothing yet nothing is left undone.
Haquin

Toaster Mantis View Drop Down

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Posted: November 05 2014 at 04:35

You've heard of UFOs, but have you heard of USOs? Apparently they're a thing outside that movie The Abyss...

"The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook

Dean

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Posted: July 03 2014 at 03:31

Atavachron wrote:

Dean wrote:

Since we are on the outer rim of the the galaxy as we look towards the constellation of Sagittarius we are looking at the centre of the galaxy edge-on and in our field of vision are the majority of the 400 billion star that the galaxy contains.

- Is this better than being toward the center, or would a panorama view be more comprehensive (if daunting to observe)?

The night sky would be brighter and while it seems a contradiction we could possibly see less stars as a result. This is because our eyes would not become fully dark-adapted (this is not just the iris fully opening, there are chemical changes in the rods and cones that make them more sensitive, which it why it takes time to become dark-adapted), an example of this effect is we see fewer stars when the Moon is up. A bright night-sky would also cause the atmosphere to glow, just as it does when light from the nearest star to us is scattered through the atmosphere - we can't see stars in the day time,

We also have evidence of this from the Moon landings - there are no stars in the any of the photographs because they were taken during the day when the Sun (and often the Earth) were visible in the sky.

Atavachron wrote:

Dean wrote:

it would take the Space Shuttle 163,429 years to fly to Proxima - we can no more imagine what 163,429 years is like than we can imagine what going around the Earth 1 billion times is like

- Actually that's not bad; that's the one number I can wrap my head around.

The number yes, but the time span? I doubt it.

160,000 years ago the human species had not left Africa, most of Europe was frozen and megafauna dominated the planet (this is during the penultimate Ice Age ... ie not the one from the popular animated film).

What?

Atavachron View Drop Down

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Posted: July 03 2014 at 00:02

Dean wrote:

- Is this better than being toward the center, or would a panorama view be more comprehensive (if daunting to observe)?

- Actually that's not bad; that's the one number I can wrap my head around.

Edited by Atavachron - July 03 2014 at 00:16

"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." -- John F. Kennedy

Dean

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Posted: July 02 2014 at 11:54

Another factor affecting what SETI can detect is the simple observation that space is not empty.

All the objects floating around in space can affect the path of an EM wave such as a radio signal or light emitted from a star. Big stuff such as galaxies, nebula and stars; medium size stuff like planets, moons, asteroids, meteors, comets, satellites, space craft, space junk and the small stuff such as dust, ice crystals, gas molecules, stray atoms and subatomic particles can all affect the passage of a signal to our receivers.

Space is not a perfect vacuum, even interstellar space has a density of a few hydrogen atoms per cubic metre and also contains dust and other space debris from exploding stars. While this ultra-low density at first seems insignificant, and indeed it is when we are considering transmission of radio waves only a few thousand kilometres, it does become significant when the distances involved are measured in light-years. This is because the mathematical formula that describes the losses is an inverse exponential power law (this is like the inverse square law of geometric spreading I mentioned earlier but much worse), so EM radiation is attenuated exponentially when it passes through a medium, even when that medium is interstellar space. Like the inverse square law that's a fundamental and immutable factor of the Universe. If this never happened we'd have full 100% 5-bar cell-phone coverage anywhere on Earth. While the density of space is small in comparison to Earth's atmosphere, the distances involved in interstellar 'communication' are astronomically huge ... at this scale low density and long distance is equivalent to high density and short distance. Therefore the total attenuation that is attributed purely to distance involves both the inverse square law and the exponential attenuation of the space it is passing through. Big distances = lots of attenuation - too much attenuation and we cannot receive it, it will be out of the range of our receivers. If you can travel a few meters and be out of WiFi range or a few kilometres and be out of range on your cell-phone, imagine the effect of travelling a few light-years on an interstellar radio source.

Having traversed the vast distances of space, the EM waves then have to contend with the Oort Cloud, the Heliosphere and all the other space debris that orbits our Sun before entering the significantly attenuating Earth's atmosphere. In all probability those signals would have passed though a similar miasma of energy-draining local space stuff when leaving the extraterrestrial solar-system it originated from.

Those who are lucky enough to live in regions of low light pollution can look up into the night sky and see the Milky Way. Since we are on the outer rim of the the galaxy as we look towards the constellation of Sagittarius we are looking at the centre of the galaxy edge-on and in our field of vision are the majority of the 400 billion star that the galaxy contains.

Yet running though this is a dark vein that astronomers call the Great Rift, this is a misnomer since it isn't a gap in the Milky Way that we can see through to deep space but a band of dust and plasma roughly 300 light years away between us and the galactic centre that is blocking the light. We can "see" through this with radio telescopes but the dust attenuates those frequencies of EM waves too and still absorbs/blocks the weaker ones. Why this obscures such a large area of the Milky Way is simply a matter of geometry and trigonometry - it is 300 ly away and the galactic centre is 27,000 lys away therefore the area it obscures at that distance is 90 times larger than the Rift itself.

[The vast distances involved cannot be stressed enough - it is incredibly difficult to comprehend how far these distances are because we have no frame of reference for distances that large - the 4.24 light years to Proxima Centauri is a stupidly huge, mind-boggling distance - 40,113,368,000,000km (24,924,839,194,400miles) - that's the same as circumnavigating the Earth 1,000 million times - it would take the Space Shuttle 163,429 years to fly to Proxima. Yet both these examples are just as incomprehensible - we can no more imagine what 163,429 years is like than we can imagine what going around the Earth 1 billion times is like - there is nothing in our experience that can allow us to picture a journey of 40 million-million kilometres. Even travelling at light-speed still takes 4.24 years to cross the space between Proxima and here - a lot can happen to a travelling wave of Electro-Magnetic radiation in 4.24 years.]

EM radiation in the form of radio waves and light waves travels in straight lines. In Earth-bound radio communication we call this "line-of-sight. On a planet such as ours with a complex, layered atmosphere some of the lower frequency radio waves can bounce off the layers in the atmosphere so can be detected beyond the horizon, but in general, for things like cell-phones and satellite tv if the receiver cannot "see" the transmitter then it doesn't receive the signal. Space does not have a complex, layered atmosphere to bend and bounce EM radiation - it can bend it slightly by the process of gravitational lensing, but that requires a massive gravitational source such as a galaxy cluster, a black hole or a quasar to act as a lens but they are relatively rare and only allows us to see very distant objects beyond our galactic neighbourhood. So to generalise again - for most of the radiant objects in the Universe, and all those within our own galaxy, if there isn't clear line-of-sight between them and the receivers here on Earth we are not going to be able to detect them.

[Proxima Centauri is interesting because it is our nearest stellar neighbour, other than that it is pretty uninteresting - as far as we can tell it has no planets, and due to its size and composition that is not a surprise - it's a small and weak red dwarf and even though it is the closest star to our own Sun it is so faint in the night sky we cannot see it without using a telescope. Red dwarves are pretty uninteresting in general - their fusion reaction just makes helium that circulates freely with the hydrogen fuel and does not produce a denser helium core, which means it can never produce the heavier elements such as carbon, nitrogen and oxygen or any of the other elements in the periodic table up to and including iron. The hydrogen-helium reaction process is very slow and very stable and lasts for trillions of years - they don't explode as novas and they don't rapidly collapse or expand - essentially the only way for a red dwarf that was formed during the past 13 billion years not to exist now is for it to have crashed into something else, such as another star or a black hole. There are however two quite interesting things about red dwarves - the first is there are a hell of a lot of them - it is estimated that 85% of the stars in the Milky Way Galaxy are red dwarves; and the second is (as I've already intimated) that they are small and produce very little light so we cannot see them with the naked eye. This means that 85% of the stars in our galaxy do not produce enough light to be seen by an observer on Earth looking up into the night sky]

Of the 400 billion stars in the galaxy only 15% (60 billion) of them emit enough light to be seen with the naked eye here on Earth. Many of those are obscured by the Great Rift and many more are blocked by each other because we are looking through the width of the galaxy - for example we do not have clear line-of-sight to all the stars on the far side of the galaxy (which would be the delta quadrant in Trekkie-speak) because all the stars between us (in the alpha quadrant) and the galactic centre obscures them. The same is true when we look in any other direction, we do not have clear line of sight to every potentially visible star in the galaxy (in any quadrant, even our own alpha quadrant) so we cannot receive light or radio signals from them either.

We can see some obscured stars, nebula and galaxies as we orbit the Sun due to the parallax effect - as our position in space moves we can peek behind a star to see what it has obscured, but because of the relatively short distance we move in space compared to the distance to that blocking-star we can only see objects that are significantly further away from the star than we are from that star itself (again, simple trigonometry). This we know because the position of the stars and the shapes of the constellations do not change dramatically as we orbit the Sun, the apparent changes in position are small and allow us to measure the distance to the stars (more trigonometry) but it doesn't reveal a large number of otherwise hidden stars to us.

All of this limits what SETI can possibly detect in its search for extraterrestrial radio sources, this is before we consider whether those radio signals are natural or not and whether those that may be artificial are created by an extraterrestrial intelligence deliberately or by accident or are the result of an as yet unknown natural phenomena (which was the case with pulsars). This doesn't make the search futile, it merely lowers expectations and makes the Fermi Paradox a little less paradoxical.

What?