Moontanman

Quite the contrary I think they speak to how it could done easily by an advanced civilization, Von Neumann Probes are just an easy solution, the motivations of a million year old civilization is as beyond our comprehension as our civilization would be to a Neanderthal. The parts we do comprehend, assuming for the moment UAP are part of our limited comprehension, require a civilization outside the box we try to shove our own into. If civilizations never make it beyond what we can comprehend then there are no UAP aliens and its something else... which would be fine with me.

The concept of a Von Neumann probe negates all that. The time factor is only a viable criticism if you insist on the experiment not being able to outlive the experimenter, in a short lived civilization like ours that is a reasonable complaint but in a civilization a Million years old where biological beings might have practical immortality or even be an intermittent part in or not be present at all in a million year old civilization. waiting a few thousand years for data might not be a problem at all especially when the data inflow involves millions of Probes sending back data as they gain knowledge of the system they were sent to. No reason to sit around and twiddle your thumbs waiting on data from a single probe when it comes in continuously from millions of probes. Such Probes would reproduce and head out for more stars to rinse and repeat.

I didn't suggest aliens had to be close by, why do you think they need to be close by? I see no reason for new physics to attain star travel.

No, data can be transmitted at c, no need for a biological being to make the trip, quite possibly no need for biological beings at all during the trip or the exploration. Even we primitive humans see the need for Probes over biological beings in our exploration of just our solar system.

Turn around time has no bearing on the possibility of star travel, it only relates to the biological individuals involved. There doesn't need to be biological beings involved in the transfer from one start to another.

I have to agree, near light speed travel is problematic for many reasons... why does this negate star travel? What we need to do is justify thinking near c travel is necessary for star travel.

On any subject but UFOs I would agree with you. Let's do it!

Humans are the we, our society assigns motivations and emotions to our perception of the world. The idea we would be interesting is indeed a human assessment, I have to admit I would visit an alien planet if I could and while it might be difficult for us to imagine, an advanced civilization might grant researchers who specialize in primitive cultures exclusive rights to study a new civilization. Such a study might take millenia and all the while we are being studied they do not officially contact us to prevent the study itself from influencing our behaviors as much as possible. They may share our desire to acquire knowledge and a small fraction of them study newly emerging civilizations. The reasons why they visit could be anything, indeed they could be reasons we couldn't understand, they are aliens btw. Hell there are humans who specialize in studying animal excrement... maybe that is why they anal probe so many 💩 Trying to discern their motivations is secondary at best to figuring out if this is going on at all. There is no reason to debate the whys and hows until we know if its actually happening and we can't know that until we start seriously looking at the data we have instead f dismissing it because we just can't imagine how it could be possible. Traveling slower than c is no barrier to star travel, I honestly don't see why anyone would think that, if our own civilization wanted to star travel it is conceivable. I kinda doubt you'd find anyone who wanted to spend that much money to do it but that is a capitalist view point. Not all civilizations will necessarily be motivated by profit. Personally I think the best motivator would be desire for knowledge. That one thing has motivated humans to do some really dangerous crazy stuff.. like the Moon landing.

My point is that when we assign human motivations to aliens we have no leg to stand on, in the Star Trek universe all or nearly all of the aliens are humanoid in both stature and motivations. I have to agree yet the devil is in the details. When your attitude is that all sighting are equally improbable you make a good point but this is simply not true. Not all sightings can be dismissed so easily, some cannot be dismissed at all. I few posts ago I posted a scientific paper about a UFO sightings but everyone has ignored it. This sighting is not so easily dismissed... still an unknown but obviously not a hubcap. The Fermi paradox and the Drake equation make some rather easily manipulated assumptions that can be used to predict almost any outcome. There could be reasons we are totally unaware of, from fear of bio contamination to simple laws a space fairing civilization might have about first contact. There is really no way to assert any reason over another. I think that if controlled hydrogen fusion is possible all those other concerns become moot. IN fact I think a pretty good argument can be made that any space fairing civilization would avoid planets and favor space habitats over colonising planets. This could led to the entire galaxy being inhabited by Von Neumann Probes colonising the galaxy via going to a star system and utilizing the asteroids and comets like bodies to build and maintain space habitats. This would also make star travel unnecessary as long as you had a star with debris around it like our Sun. We could realistically use the idea of rotating space habitats to build colonies that would when assed up amount to many times as much space as the surface of the earth. There are so many possibilities that do not limit an intelligence to just one planet but one thing you keep asserting bothers me a bit. You seem to think that Von Neumann Probes and the info they collect wouldn't be useful because ( I am assuming here) that the individual who sent the probe would be dead way before any data could be harvested from the probe. @TheVat explained why your take on this isn't as profound as you seem to think it s The possibilities of technology really do expand this discussion to new areas.

I didn't say it did, the only way we can know alien motivations is for us to ask them!

I just had an endoscopy session... I can't say why so many people seem to enjoy claiming to have had one extra clinically.

Actually yes they are, the idea that aliens are just like us in the needs, wants, and desires department is exactly what Star Trek thinking is, the magical technology is just window dressing for what is essentially just a human story. All we can hope to do is detect the presence of aliens in our solar system, the whys of the issue will have to be answered by any aliens should they prove to exist. My main concern at this time is that the presence of aliens is being ignored for reasons unknown or intentionally covered up for reasons unknown... I know it smacks of conspiracy theory but just because its a conspiracy doesn't mean its not happening. If it is just the gov trying to keep their military secrets then why are they still grimly hanging on to "secrets" from before WW2? If it was just protecting military secrets then revealing them as they lose their reason for being secrete would be a great way to show this whole thing as bs. It would be quite simple to point out that supposed sightings from the 50s could be explained by pointing out the outdated secrete that was being protected by denying a particular sighting. Edward James Ruppelt , director of project Blue Book, has been quoted as saying (not a direct quote) that both Project Sign and Project Grudge were overtly biased and politicized noting that in these investigations doing the standard investigations normally means an unbiased evaluation of intelligence data but it doesn't take a great deal of study of the old UFO files to see the standard intelligence procedures were not being followed by Project Grudge (it should be pointed out that Project Sign came to the conclusion that at least some UFOs were interplanetary space craft) Everything was being evaluated on the premise of UFOs (aliens) cannot exist and no matter what you see or hear do not believe it! I still feel its necessary to point out that the US gov is not the end all be all of UFO sightings info, other world governments give the alien hypothesis more credence than the US does at this time but most do tow the US party line. That would be just as silly.

Again, I do not assert UAP are aliens, they are unidentified, aliens is just one remote possibility, time travelers have been suggested as a possible explanation but I have my doubts about time travel as I am sure most people do. They could be visitors from another plane of existence, or as Jacques Vallée has suggested, quite seriously, that the UFO phenomena is connected with things like fairies, gnomes, and other supposed supernatural creatures from lore. The most obvious thing here is that UAP are just misidentification of known or unknown natural objects but the best data we have doesn't support that premise in many cases... it is these outliers that concern me. And no, "It could have been a picture of a hubcap someone threw", is not a viable explanation. As for alien motivations... you make a good point if you are talking about a civilization that is only a few thousand years since it lived in caves. A civilization that has existed for millions of years might have more long-term goals and data can be transmitted at the speed of light. Trying to guess the motivations of aliens is not a winning gambit.

You are making the error of UFP thinking, as though the only viable way to visit us is by a ship that carries aliens here in some short time frame and the aliens then explore our solar system. This is highly improbable, more likely Von Neumann Probes would be sent out all over the galaxy. Such a probe could manufacture all the probes we see and even biological beings. This solves the distance, time, and resource constraints and makes much more sense than sending manned space craft actors the galaxy. Of course this is just my personal speculations and has no weight other than speculations. As for the amount of data, you miss my point, for many years the Air Force tried to say that UFO sightings were only unidentified due to a lack of data. Then documents were released that said in fact that some sightings were inexplicable despite have huge amounts of data. This is the reason its important to say that these sightings can be unexplained despite large amounts of data. The amount of data cannot be used to dismiss or confirm this phenomena. @MigL I understand that its difficult to step outside your world view and even look at things you have been taught to dismiss out of hand. From what I've seen on here you don't strike me as the type to simply ignore this because "It can't be true" syndrome. I don't follow the UFO phenomenon because I'm a crazy nut case, its because I found out that, for what ever reason, UFO sightings were being misrepresented by the government for reasons unknown. If no one was affected by this ie it was just something that is unimportant, then I would see no reason to pursue this. But it is important, in fact the existence of aliens would be the most important thing the human race has discovered in modern times possibly for all times. Not looking at the available data will not change the data or the direction that data indicates. If you won't look at the data then don't, I have admitted that with current understanding of how science works then no data we currently have can be said to be significant and no matter how hard we try until a alien probe lands on the white house lawn in full view of a scientist with instruments nothing can be said to be "scientific data" I think this is really not true and in fact I think we have data that is equal to data in the same way that is accepted by scientists as long as its not about UFOs. UFO, the very idea of what the term indicates poisons the well for some people. The old saw of "It can't be aliens, due to some supposed impossibility like distance or time. These are not impediments to technology, only biology and only then if you insist on a Star Trek like universe. Yes the data so far falls far short of scientific rigor but exactly how would such data be collected with out knowing when a UFO is going to appear? There are reports that IMHO qualify as significant evidence but evidently looking at them is not worth anyone's time. I personally think that is sad... I think it hearkens back to when "science" refused to even consider stones fell from the sky... imagine that. Here is an example of significant data. http://kirkmcd.princeton.edu/JEMcDonald/mcdonald_fsr_16_3_2_70.pdf

I do appreciate everyone answering this question, I honestly had no idea I was opening such a can of worms! While I am aware of Relativity and how frames of reference worked I was genuinely unaware of how fundamental the idea of reference frames was in this scenario. Thank you very much for answering my question in detail, while I am sure I am stilling missing much of the concept due to not speaking mathematics I am much closer than I was to understanding.

Thank you, exactly what I was wondering but I didn't realize the station was necessary.

Impartial observer... not what I had in mind, I was just thinking of the two rockets approaching each other and how they would see each other. The relative speeds of the cars was what I was getting at, I really didn't realize I wasn't being clear on that. I understand there is no track to measure anything by in relativity.

The observer is on each rocket, the rocket judges its own speed by its departure point, from my point of view it looks like the combined speeds would be greater than c, I understand this is not possible except in my frame of reference but what would the two space craft measure each others speed as?

My thoughts on this is that the rockets would measure a combined speed but still less than c . Out side or before relativity the two space craft would have been thought to approach each other as faster than c but relativity precludes that so I thought they would see each other approaching at a speed faster than .9999 c... something like .9999999 c or something closer to c but not faster than c.

Ok, so they couldn't measure their relative speeds without the station to compare it to? I am trying guys

Evidently I am too slow to get this one. I understand the two space craft would be approaching the space station at .9999 c but what would they measure each others speed at?

Would the space station influence the speed the two space craft measure on each other?

They are measuring each others speed.

So there would be no combined speed effect at all?

If two space craft were approaching each other at 99.999% of the speed of light, what would the speed of each appear to be to the other since the speeds would not add up like two trains traveling at 100 mph toward each other.