Moontanman

That is interesting, thank you, I was quoting what is said when considering fluorine as a breathing gas, oxygen the gas we breathe, the element used in water as well is number one. For fluorine to work as a replacement for oxygen, which is what is basically being proposed here, the abundance of fluorine would have to be orders of magnitude more common than it is. Fluorine is so reactive that all of it is locked up in minerals which of course would soak up even more enormous quantities of fluorine if it was available.

Hmmm no, I mean actually make a nuclear bomb, It's not complex, but acquiring the basic materials is difficult. A gun type device would be my first choice...

Fluorine is so rare the possibility of it being used by biology would severely limit the size of any ecosystem and virtually all the fluorine would end up locked in rocks..

I'm going to have to disagree, give me the materials and access to a metal shop and I bet I could make a small nuke, wouldn't be very efficient and as long as I didn't mind dying for my creation it is doable. Rogue nations like NK could sell plutonium or enriched uranium to any players in the nuke game. Do you have a link to your critique of the "amateur atomic device"? Smuggling a nuke in a container on a cargo vessel seems to be the easiest way to get a nuke in place to do major damage.

As far as I know the only attempt at a scientific study of UAP was the Condon report which, by their own admission, started out with the conclusion and looked to for ways to support that conclusion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condon_Committee

I do try!

Silicone refers to chains of silicon and oxygen atoms joined in a chain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicone Silicon in this context refers to chains of silicon atoms arranged like carbon chains. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silanes

I am flat out asserting the investigation is inadequate, assumptions have nothing to do with it.. Investigating the possibility of aliens or alien civilizations is not something that a shift in focus is necessary for. We only look for them far away, I am suggesting we look for them close at hand. We are quite capable of doing this, we simply do not because the idea of UFOs and close by aliens is not taken seriously...

Silicon or silicone? Silicone based life would have to be hot but silicon life would have to be cold... very cold... Titan has been suggested as a place suitable for silicon life but Venus is closer to what silicone life would require...

I am assuming nothing, I am not even assuming they exist, I am saying that so far the UAP is worthy of investigation, nothing more... Yes, heat signatures in the outer solar system, or any part really but my hypothesis is about a alien presence in places like the Kuiper Belt or Oort cloud... We do look for IR signatures but so far everything we have launched is looking for planets. It should be possible to use the same or similar technology to look for smaller objects closer in... A fusion powered habitat would by definition give off waste heat. Even in the depths of space waste heat is a problem, the bigger the object the more of a problem hiding waste heat would be. An object radiating at a temp of 0 degrees celsius should stand out like a beacon among objects at nearly absolute zero...

I've never said that aliens would not leave stuff behind, I just don't see how assuming they would is productive in any way... Again, looking for anomalous heat signatures is the way I am suggesting. Yes, we do have to make some assumptions, the biggest is that aliens might be here. If we assume aliens would have to follow the zeitgeist of humanity then either they should be all over us or non existent. I am saying there are more probable possibilities than the UFP or the Galactic empire. Simply searching for heat signatures would be a good start and it could piggy back on other research...

Exactly! We have no idea what they might or might not do so using our own experiences as the standard is not conducive to investigating the phenomena... I'll not argue the point, what we have both said or implied is already here. So you are not paying attention? I have been suggesting that passively waiting for et to shit in our hand is a waste of time. We should be checking the solar system for heat anomalies, artificial alien habitats should be detectable via the waste heat they radiate.

What does that have to do with advanced aliens giving Earth a look from time to time if they are already here? So if we can't find any evidence for life nearby then looking for alien technology is a waste of time? I would never expect a captured UFO, I would expect a lot more than microbes on Mars before i would accept UFOs as alien spacecraft... BTW the OP is about alien technology not microbes on Mars..

You missed my point completely, yes has investigated and those investigations are highly suspect and definitely not scientific, the Air Force only wanted to debunk, not explain, since it's first investigation concluded that UFOs were interplanetary spacecraft and that was rejected by people because they refused to accept it, not because the study was flawed... So you expect a culture capable of interstellar travel to be dumping garbage on us? You are simply being insulting now, you change from alien technology to alien bacteria as though they were equivalent, the alien fossil microbes from Mars are a far cry from a spacecraft... Not to mention the finding was 20 years ago and now thought to be simply minerals...

Hard to dig out of a hole...

As far as you can dig...

This has pretty much been the stance of the Air Force and the scientific establishment nearly from the very beginning... Again, aliens visiting Earth would imply a technology past ours, to expect them to provide undeniable proof is a bit much. I don't honestly see how we could expect to find such proof. A crashed alien spacecraft might do it but that is like people on a isolated island seeing jet vapor trails and expecting to find physical evidence before they can even admit that the trails exist. Any alien will do, while I am sure that most theists would only acknowledge their god the detection of anything like a god would be earth shattering..

That would be even more world shattering but OT...

I'm not sure what your point is here. Indeed I think you did, no one much less me is suggesting that UFOs are anything but unknowns. I am suggesting that the current paradigm of "nothing to see here move along" is self defeating... Ok, I'll agree that it proves nothing but that calls into question why you used that example... And no matter what these people find it's never enough, they do not have the qualifications necessary to get a proper response to anything they find much less have the resources to really investigate the issue. The air of ridicule surrounding the issue makes sure that anyone who wants to look risks loosing the respect of his peers at the very least... At the very least the idea that current investigations are anything but the equivalent of children being sent out to search for tasmanian tigers instead of professionals... All humans are Jesus shaped, what is your point? For the same reason discovering anything profoundly new and unknown is important. What could be more important than to learn if, how, and why aliens are colonizing the outer solar system?

I am proposing that we can know, there are ways of falsifying this hypothesis, as far as I know there is no way to falsify religion... You don't think finding a T-Rex corpse washed up would make a difference? Finding such a thing would have world shattering consequences! The implications are enormous. Finding that just one alien habitat is real would be the most important find in our history..

I said "probable enough" to justify investigating not enough to draw conclusions. Lots of time and money are being spent right now on passive detection of aliens who would have to be broadcasting a signal intentionally to show they are here. A great many people still think that we could detect "leakage" from a civilization but it's simply not true. Leakage from our own civilization could not be detected by our own current technology at the distance to the nearest star... Obviously, I wouldn't expect them to be yet so many people seem to think that somehow a sample of metal should be able to show evidence of its origin being non terrestrial, highly unlikely... I am not rushing to any conclusion but I'm betting that there is an ongoing effort to physically find a tasmanian tiger, sitting around waiting for one to shit in your hand seems a bit less than effective... Do you think this proves nothing was there or just that you didn't see anything? Obviously not, I am not asking anyone to do so, what I am asking is should we be actively looking? Is the current evidence we have justification for actively searching for nearby aliens? I think it is, at the very least it's as valid as scanning the sky looking for a signal from someone screaming "here we are" across the universe... To me the really sad part is the attitude that until a flying saucer lands on the white house lawn we can't know so why try... This is a particularly grievous mistake from my perspective. It's like finding a rotting T-Rex corpse washed up on the beach, the tide takes it back out and no one even cares to get in a airplane and scan the coastal waters for the corpse, it can't be real and it stinks to high heaven so why bother..

That was my attempt to show how silly the idea of testing something and being able to tell if it was extraterrestrial becomes. What exactly would you expect positive evidence of something being of extraterrestrial to look like? So many people seem to think that a rock from outer space would somehow be different from a rock from the earth or an asteroid but inevitably the universe is made of the same basic materials everywhere and believers, especially believers, seem to think that dust or rocks are labeled as to their origin. Nothing could be further from the truth and while such gradations can be made it takes extremely sophisticated equipment and a point of reference for those sort of tests to be meaningful. What sort of trace evidence would be acceptable? The main difference in our stance is I think it can be tested. I think the quality of at least some sightings makes it probable enough that non terrestrial technology could be involved. I think we could falsify this one way or another. One way might be via detecting waste heat given off by artificial habitats, the distance factor, Kuiper Belt or Oort Cloud, would make it a challenge, but like most challenges even failing would be better than not trying... Like most people, and I don't fault you for this, you raised the bar on what you would accept as soon as it became apparent that at least some trace evidence exists. We can go on splitting hairs over what constitutes good evidence, for me that evidence is already here. Like most people I tend to feel like really good evidence is too good to be true and all other evidence is inconclusive at best. In the 1952 Washington DC sightings a very poor job of investigation coupled with a military that was trying it's best to appear to be in control resulted in less than believable explanations being taken as gospel by both points of view. Some people need to believe it's not true, some seem to need to believe it is, for whatever reason, just as fervently. At some point you need to decide what level of uncertainty in the evidence prompts a more specific investigation and how that investigation can be done. Now we have the possibility of a way to find out. Decades of pictures, eyewitnesses, radar returns and abduction reports become moot if a real way to do more than just pour over old reports and speculate. The real question about evidence is whether or not what we have justifies further investigation and do we have a means to investigate. I think the answer to both questions is yes.

Me too, mine barely toasts bread...