Moontanman

We react to things according to chemical reactions. At it's most basic all life is just chemicals, emergent properties like consciousness cannot be separated from the basic chemical reactions of life...

Considering that it is 7th in size among all the inner asteroids I think massive is accurate...

Of course there are natural alternatives but none of them held up in the bigger picture. Yes an airplane confirmed at one point that one of the returns was a boat on the river... case closed? No of course not because while some of the sighting can be blamed on natural phenomena most of it cannot. I pick this one sighting because of the multiple threads of evidence in the sighting. Hell I'm still not convinced what was going on but I do know that trying to explain parts of it as mundane and ignore the meat of the report gets us nowhere. I am more than willing to concede this sighting to the role of explained but not at the expense of reality...

I misunderstood what was being said, I was thinking a new asteroid in the inner solar system... Thank you.

That would make it the 7th largest asteroid... very big...

I cannot agree, a bacterium at the very least can react to its environment, can a toaster react its environment without lots of tweeking? I know my toaster does not do this...

Where did you get the size of the object? I think maybe you are off by a factor of 1000...

How would dirt or dust be identified as alien? https://www.express.co.uk/news/weird/763816/UFO-landed-earth-proof-Delphos-Dr-Erol-Faruk https://listverse.com/2015/05/20/10-ufos-that-allegedly-left-physical-evidence-behind/

No one is claiming that aliens are responsible for everything not immediately recognised by radar operators, radar is quite a bit more than just some random technology being used to intentionally scam people. You insinuation of this is yet another attempt at poisoning the well. Either Radar can be evidence of a UFO or detecting objects at a distance is just more silly pseudo science. Which is it? You cannot have it both ways. Not true, in fact people get the death penalty from eyewitness testimony. https://capitalpunishmentincontext.org/resources/trialprocess http://www.ufoevidence.org/Cases/CaseView.asp?section=PhysicalTrace I would agree but with the caviate that being sarcastic about they are is not helpful either...

I may have missed the point as well, I did read a paper many years ago that asserted that protists were as aware of their environment as small mammals but to be honest I thought it was quite a stretch...

FTL depends on things like negative mass and negative energy, until we can demonstrate they exist FTL is just a pipe dream...

Until you can make a toaster do that along with reproduce (I know moving the goal posts) but reproduction with variation is a big part of the idea that toaster is as alive as a bacteria...

Well exactly, the fact that the maths can be worked out say nothing about the actual doing of things like warp drive or worm holes... Well you do have a good point, my main reason for this line of speculation is to show the idea of it being improbable if not impossible is simply not true and in fact would be quite easy to do. We just have to get past all the science and fiction that seems to show how we would do this and get back to what is likely to be done. Once you put aside all the impossible and improbable ideas the fact remains that we should be able to detect these "aliens" if they are here. an alien habitat giving off orders of magnitude more heat than a natural object should would be a big clue detecting such a heat source out to the Oort cloud would be difficult but doable...

Radar is not some random pseudo technology, the key here is that you say If there was such verification this conversation wouldn't be happening. What is your point? Do you really think that a UFO being delivered to you is reasonable? Do you really expect alien spacecraft to fall out of the sky to provide you a "body" ? Sorry dude, you are incorrect, in fact such traces have been found and are not uncommon... And I pointed out the comparison is nothing more than poisoning the well. The fact that other phenomena occur which are not part of the UFO phenomena is meaningless to the subject in question... Sorry typo, I meant to say do not have the resources. You are correct, we do over time become aware of their work and sometimes we see it for what it is right up front. The Air Force was so disrespectful of the phenomena they actually hired scientists to not investegate but to debunk all sighting. Some of those scientists bowed out due to the perceived "the fix is in" mentality of all government sponsored investigations and reported the governments attempted coverup. If not for those people speaking out we would not have the information but to be fair so much of what the Air Force did was so silly that to say they suppressed the information is far from the truth. They took the low road and rificulted the infor instead of supressing it as you would expect. This resulted in a far more effective debunking of UAPs than actually trying to keep all info from the public.. Some of the main "debunkers" forever destroyed their own capabilities by asserting that some sightings were slow moving meteors or comets, these assertions are so divorced from reality you really have to wonder why there were allowed to say this crap...

FTL requires technology that so far remains beyond any engineering capabilities we are currently capable of or can even predict.

Here is an example of pseudo scorpions engaging in group hunting behavior. Could this be part of how other colonial arthropods evolved? https://www.newscientist.com/article/2168506-ferocious-pack-hunting-pseudoscorpions-believe-in-sharing-fairly/?

My answer? Yes the answer to why we seldom see them but they can have access to us without FTL? If such an alien presence is currently nearby then you would not expect them to pay much attention unless of course they were curious and did scientific research on newly emerging civilizations. Observing us from drone platforms would fit in rather well with the basic UFO phenomena and the crazier parts would fit in well with the human tendency to exaggerate... Of course none of this is anything but speculation unless there is a way to falsify the speculation and we do have at least one avenue of investigation. If aliens are present in nearby space then we should be able to detect them assuming they have to follow the physical laws of the universe. They or their ships and habitats should give off copious amounts of waste heat. Hiding this waste heat from reasonably powerful detectors would be difficult...

As soon as ghosts start showing up on multiple radars your analogy will be considered. I have to ask could any photo really be proof of anything other than an unidentified object on film? No one has claimed eyewitnesses are special but multiple independent eye witnesses are enough to get you the death penalty... I would have to ask what sort of physical evidence would you expect from an alien spacecraft? I'd really like to know... You're mention of all the other unexplained phenomena as though any of them have some bearing on each other or UFOs, if you have a connection between those things then please show it, if not you are just trying to poison the well... Yes people have investigated the UFO phenomena, most do have the resources to do much more than record records of sightings. The US Air Force did indeed suppress investigations into UFOs even going so far as to pay the Condon Committee to come to the correct conclusion before the investigation was even started.

Once you get past the idea that planets are necessary the possibilities open up drastically. I think it's quite possible that artificial habitats are very common throughout the Milky Way. The only technology you need that we can't really use at this time is fusion. Once you have controlled fusion, planets and stars become redundant at best. Several alien civilizations could be operating in the Sun's Oort cloud and we would never know unless they decided to check us out due to simple curiosity. I think the idea that ftl is needed before you can star travel is kinda like saying you need supersonic aircraft before you can visit another island in the Pacific. I think the idea that has influenced me the most in this subject are RV's, if you have a reliable RV you don't really need a house nor does it matter if it takes weeks to get to someplace. You are carrying your "world" around with you as you travel. If an RV owner was capable of stopping near a source of raw materials and building another RV and then traveling on would be a bit more accurate analogy... The idea of ftl and vast interstellar empires has sparked our imaginations for many years but the reality will, IMHO, be a bit less flash and more substance than star trek... This video is by Isaac Arthur a physicist and futurist who seems to have my thought patterns down pretty close... Some of these ideas come across much better when explained in a video than simply reading about them. Some really good productions are coming out of youtube! Of course the nonsense is still there as well...

Using a mystery to explain another mystery is more of a desperate attempt than a real explanation...

How about multiple independent eye witnesses military and civilian, multiple independent radar military and civilian, and interaction with commercial and military aircraft? all in one sighting? Would that peak your interest at all? Evidence is a rather odd thing when it comes to phenomena that are unknowns but have an effect on reality. Many people choose to ignore evidence if it doesn't fit in with what they think or want to be possible. If the evidence for a sighting is too good to ignore it becomes an obvious hoax if it's iffy then it becomes something we don't have enough data on to identify the object. Believe it or not the professional scientific community does have people who think there is something going on that should be investigated instead of ridiculed. As far as I know ridicule has never been part of the scientific method nor has ignoring data because the Air Force says so. No, it's the sun seen through a layer of smog... Well you may have thought you gave a reasonable argument, actually you were arguing with a man who had a migraine and couldn't think. It's easy to cherry pick parts of a sighting to explain but unless you have a coherent explanation that covers both the easy to explain and the more difficult then you are simply cherry picking... Well you may have thought you gave a reasonable argument, actually you were arguing with a man who had a migraine and couldn't think. It's easy to cherry pick parts of a sighting to explain but unless you have a coherent explanation that covers both the easy to explain and the more difficult then you are simply cherry picking... A couple interesting links. http://www.openminds.tv/scientific-study-of-ufos-to-be-focus-of-new-organization/41238 http://www.explorescu.org/

You define evidence and I'll see if I can accommodate you. Lots of evidence exists whether or not it would satisfy you is the question...

Care to prove that?

Bacteria seek out nutrient gradients, will move away from bad conditions ect. https://sites.cns.utexas.edu/harsheylab/bacterial-motility

I'm thinking that CharonY has that covered. Fine, argue it with me... Gee you are correct, Bender, show me a toaster that seeks out a source of bread and you might have a point. I'd like to see those answers you are speaking of, should you assume the content of the minds of everyone here?