Moontanman

Doesn't the presence of heavy elements cause fusion to happen at lower mass? I think i read someplace about the first stars having to be much more massive due to a lack of elements heavier than helium. Carbon is significant if I remember, there is at least one star that has a unusual amount of transuranic elements. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Przybylski's_Star

Would aliens who evolved on a Super Earth be trapped due to the difficulty of leaving the planet? A Super Earth 16,000 miles in diameter with a similar density would have a volume 8 times Earth's, 4 times the surface area, and twice the gravity. Escape Velocity would be twice Earth normal? I'm not sure if my numbers are accurate but you get the idea. https://www.space.com/40375-super-earth-exoplanets-hard-aliens-launch.html

Intelligence is in the mind of the being defining it. We think of ourselves being the most intelligent creature on Earth because intelligence tests are designed by us and compared to us. Elephants have huge brains and are quite intelligent and if they were designing an intelligence test we would probably come up short in their minds...

My yongest son always asked "how Come"

No independant information is involved, just chemicals reacting in ways governed by physics. The information is imposed from without by us to make it easier to explain and quantify complexity... Complexity can arise and can be shown to arise spontaneously from kaos... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory

I used to be a bit of a heavy drinker, tequila was my poison of choice and drinking water was my secrete to no hangovers. When i was young we used to camp on the beach and surf fish all night, if your definition of surf fishing is drinking all night and taking your line out of the water if the fish become too annoying... In the morning after a night of drunken revelry while everyone else was lying around sick and throwing up I would be cooking bacon and eggs and laughing my ass off. Most of the guys refused to use my method due to being told that drinking water would make them sicker. Old wives tales are often incorrect...

I would have to disagree that there is no evidence for how abiogenesis came about, there is considerable evidence just not absolute evidence. There are more than one possibility for many of the necessary processes the possibility exists that there are more than one valid route to life. Artificial life like forms have been developed in many definitions of life but the path to our particular life is still unknown and may indeed be a synergy of more than one path. It's quite certain that eucaryote life like us... is a synergy of several different life forms combining in a symbiosis. I may not be a biologist but i have reproduced biologically.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis Once you get past the idea of a sudden appearance of a recognisable life form the idea becomes much more manageable. The process is thought to have been gradual not sudden and some would say inevitable under the correct circumstances. The one thing abiogenesis is not is chance, chance is not part of the process, chemicals react in ways governed by physics not chance... http://www.iflscience.com/physics/life-inevitable-consequence-physics/

The best hangover sure i know of is drinking water, large amounts of water, before, during, and after your alcohol bing. Not drinking too much is a much wiser route to avoiding a hangover...

There is a name for it Strange, it's called lying for god...

If we are expecting to see the equivalent of the UFP or the star ship Enterprise I think the expectations are totally unrealistic. The idea of colonising another Earth like planet is equally unrealistic as is terraforming another panet if for no other reason the time scales involved in terraforming if not the actual distances needed to be covered. I love to read science fiction and watch science fiction TV and movies but the more realistic ideas of slowly mining the galaxy for materials to build artificial habitats in the not so empty space between the stars doesn't really make for snappy episodes of tv or movies. Even small discrepancies in the parameters of another planet would make them uninhabitable to humans without some serious Genetic modification. Once you get past the idea of scouting the galaxy for habitable worlds and get down to building our own worlds the idea becomes much more realistic if more than a bit slow and boring. Colonising the galaxy in a few million years does not make for good drama but it does make sense. I have my doubts that any other civilization will want to do anything with alien worlds other than avoid them. The possibility of biological contamination in of itself is worrying if not the ethical issues of invasive species wiping out other ecosystems. Humans have done rather badly by doing this on Earth by allowing species to be spread outside their natural boundaries here in Earth and we share all our DNA with them. I can see the possibility of occasional visits by their equivalent of researchers but I would expect them to be few and far between and their presence would almost certainly mean they are already nearby and exploiting the raw materials of our own Oort cloud. I would expect such expeditions to only be sent out long after the Planetary system in question already has a long term colony of space habitats operating in the outer reaches of the worlds in question. While the revelation of this would probably not be as Earth shattering as some think it would be disturbing to our own future plans of expansion. IMHO even if UFOs do not represent an alien civilization visiting us they still have a potential tale to tell about how the human minds works and possibly even how mythology and religion originates. Another rather long shot is that UFOs themselves represent some sort of unknown natural phenomena that that has it's own value as furthering our knowledge of the universe... There are many reports with actual evidence that either represents something real or some sort of widespread natural tendency or conspiracy of human perception... There are reports that are either complete hoaxes or an actual extraordinary event, no third possibility exists... Firmenant? What exactly do you mean by firmenant? One possible explanation for the Fermi Paradox is that star travel is not reasonable unless the resources of the original planetary system has been turned into a Dyson Swarm. Even if controlled fusion never becomes possible we already have a fusion reactor nearby and we could break up the planets to make a dyson swarm consisting of the equivalent of a billion times the surface area of the Earth. How long would this take? would it ever really be over? Is there really any motivation to star travel?

I have to say me too! That is why i mostly fixate on old reports, youtube is full so full of fake stuff I think I'd have to be on the spot and see one land on the white house lawn and then I'd how it was faked... There is a guy near where i live who flies a lighted drone at night, I keep expecting to see it on youtube at anytime. The fact remains that something is going on or was and most arguments to the contrary were fixed by disinformation and unrealistic expectations...

It is important to note that the "me too" syndrome is a big part of UFOs but cherry picking reports is also a big part of the UFO phenomena. None of the pics you posted are impressive, all are easily explained. Why would someone looking to figure something out pass up the difficult for the easily explained unless they were looking for a predetermined explanation? I am not accusing you of that but that is how it has worked since the US Air Force "Project Sign" concluded that UFOs were likely interplanetary spacecraft. What would you have said if you were talking to this pilot? I was once asked that if UFOs were really alien spacecraft why didn't we ever find pieces of them. My reply was " I live under the flight path of an airport, dozens of airplanes fly over my house everyday, some so low I can see the faces of the pilots. Interestingly I have never seen or found a piece of an aircraft that fell off... The number of sightings that are extraordinary are not numerous but they are really interesting.

Here we go again should be tempered by the quality of the sighting but yeah the human desire of "me too" is rampant. I've tried it myself. several times when i was on the end of a fishing pier I would shout "he did you guys see that huge fish jump?" of course no fish jumped but the majority of the people would say "yeah i saw it" and start describing it in great detail. It works nearly every time. Herd mentality is a very strong thing in humans. I agree that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence warp drive is not required to colonise the galaxy. People who are used to living in O'Nell cylinders would be free to travel anywhere and when they find a chunk of matter they can top up volatiles or even stop and construct another habitat. Interstellar space is full of rocky/icy bodies and if you are using carbon as your main construction material the old one makes two and those make four and so on builds up quickly. All the photos you posted are low hanging fruit and easily explained, there are photos that defy explanation and sightings that really do make you go hmmm. I don't waste my time on reports that are either clear or obviously natural phenomenon. My hypothesis is that aliens avoid gravity wells unless they need something that only exists there or are studying a new intelligent species. Not wanting to interfere with impressionable savages is enough of a reason for them to not contact us and we only get fleeting glimpses of them. My own little dog and pony show is that civilizations ignore planets, too difficult and time consuming to terraform, bodies in the Oort clouds of stars are far more desirable and contain everything needed. And yet the 1952 sightings remain and only one has to be real. The first air force study of UFOs concluded they were interplanetary space craft. The Air Force brass shit a litter of kittens and demanded they come up with another explanation and that all sighting must be debunked.

To some extent I feel like I am beating a dead horse but here goes. The vast majority of UFO sighting are either conventional objects misidentified or lack enough data to really make a judgment. Contrary to popular belief there are sightings that suffer from an embarrassment of data and yet stubbornly refuse to be identified. It should be mentioned that the original meaning of UFO was a flying object that could not be identified after exhaustive study, not simply lights in the sky. There are many "classes" of UFOs from the ones so silly they make for a good laugh to sightings that are either unknown technology so inexplicable as to be spacecraft or intentional hoaxes no third option is likely. Personally I am unimpressed by "lights in the sky" while unidentified there is simply not enough information to even intelligently speculate about what they might be. It's is important to note that for whatever reason the US Air Force did pursue a campaign of disinformation and pressured other countries to do the same. Scientists were discouraged if not actually threatened with ridicule not to give the subject any credence. Much of this pressure wasn't overt but it existed all the same. In fact The Condon Report actively threatened the researchers involved if they attempted to take the subject seriously. The Entire study was paid for by the US Air Force and the Condon committee asked the Air Force ahead of time what conclusion they wanted the study to show... hardly scientific to say the least. Many powerful people went out of their way establish the foolhardiness of even considering the subject as anything but misguided fantasy. Admittedly studying something that cannot be directly tested is difficult but a clear photo of a T-Rex walking down the street might not be absolutely convincing as evidence once the photo was judged to be genuine I am quite sure it would be seriously investigated. Such photos of UFOs do exist, yet the better the quality of the picture the more likely it is to be assumed to be fake. From some random farmer who manages to snap a photo of something extraordinary to gun site pictures and video to multiple independent radar returns, multiple independent eye witnesses and even military and civilian pilots there is data, data that on any other subject would be taken seriously. The 1952 Washington DC sighting was and still is one of the most inexplicable encounters on record. Multiple independent civilian eye witnesses, multiple independent military eye witnesses, multiple independent radar returns, actual interaction with both civilian and military aircraft the sighting is an extraordinary event. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1952_Washington,_D.C._UFO_incident These pictures is either a hoax or a real UFO: They were taken in 1950 by a farmer who gained nothing from them and whose character was considered beyond reproach. They might not be aliens but they, at the very least, offer some insight into how humans think when faced with unusual events...

I have my doubts about warp drive, if it is possible then huge multi star civilizations are quite probable and yet we see no trace of them. O'Nell type habitats are not just possible they are quite probable given time. It is also true that with current technology we could colonise the entire galaxy in a few million years, all that is needed IMHO is the first manufacturing facility in space once it gets started, barring some natural catastrophe, we will be able to build O'Nell type habitats, the cylinders joined at the ends to form a huge bucky ball like structure is one of the things Isaac Arthur surprised me with. I have always thought of a torus type structure but the materials are already in space, we can already access space can assembly lines of space habitats be the natural course of the evolution of our civilization? In my mind the only obstacle to this future is money, we spend so little on space and so much on the military I wonder if militarization of space will be the catalyst for living in space. I once read that if we spent the money we spend on the military in space we, as a nation mind you, could already occupy the inner solar system and be planning the utilization of the kuiper belt and oort cloud. That is just with the money the US spends on trying to do what occupying space would do by default. The military always wants to occupy the high ground, hard to get any higher and large boulders traveling at orbital velocity make Nuclear weapons look like firecrackers. It would be sad if that is why we eventually occupy space but the military has been indirectly the cause of a great deal of what we take for granted in technology today. O'Neal type colonies may be at least part of the solution to the fermi paradox as well...

Mean Mary!

Admittedly controlled fusion would make it far easier but we do have the technology, O'Nell cylinders were first proposed in 1976, we do have the tech to build them but they would require we stop spending money of ways to kill each other... Agreed I haven't You are correct, an unknown is just that an unknown. But to ignore unknowns seems a bad idea. To ignore them because the Air force wants them to be ignored is dangerous IMHO... Carl Sagan is one of my heros but he is still an authority speaking of something he cannot know any more than we can due to lack of investigation. Many sighting are interesting but only one alien space craft is world changing in scope. My personal fav sighting is the 1952 Washington DC sightings. Might not have been anything but a weather phenomena but none of the experts on sight at the time agreed with the air force's assessment. Films from the time of the Air force's official denials were so obviously BS it really does make one wonder... BeeCee you might like this, he is my fav futurist...

Self contained space colonies could in theory colonise the entire galaxy in a couple million years. An eye blink in cosmic time. Colonising planets is difficult due to gravity wells. The Trojan points of jupiter contain trillions of tons of material that could be used to manufacture space habitats like Japan makes cars... Interstellar space contains a great many objects that could be used to make new colonies once we use up the Oort cloud and Kuiper belt. We really do have the means all we need is the will. Controlled fusion would help as well... Planets are unlikely to be Earth like enough to support humans, a few will be to be sure but space habitats are or will be the gold standard. Aliens may very well have no interest in planets or even gravity wells close to stars. Once you break free of the need for planets the galaxy is your oyster and there is no need to linger close to stars...

More importantly many of the unexplained suffer from an embarrassment of data. Time and distance are not barriers, we currently possess the technology to colonise the galaxy, slow and steady wins the race... The motivations of aliens are.. well alien. we have no idea what their motivations might be...

Well so far no evidence shows they are wrong and the lack of interest in evidence is disturbing... Martian canals? You're reaching John... Anytime ridicule substitutes for evidence there is a problem...

Again, do you have any evidence other than a video? On this site a link to a paper is appreciated... To discuss this requires us to break it down into individual reports. We cannot allow gish galloping...

I think he should have dropped the word "that"...

John, I respect you and your knowledge in most areas but the phenomenon of UFOs has considerable evidence. I cannot honestly say what the evidence means, it could be anything from aliens to brain farts common to all humans but to say there is no evidence is simply not true. There have been scientists who were convinced something extraordinary was going on. These scientists were privy to info we simply do not have access to. The US Air Force actively pursued a policy of ridicule and made a point to influence this policy among academics. The official investigation called the Condon Report was a sham and started out with a conclusion and tried to make sure only evidence that supported that conclusion was heard. Doesn't mean UFOs are alien space craft but the stench of a coverup still lingers to this day. One scientist J. Allen Hynek, who was hired by the air force to debunk UFO sightings actually changed sides and stated publicly that the air force was being dishonest about UFOs and in his estimation UFOs represented technology not of this world. Still the evidence is not a smoking gun, or even a gun but it is interesting. I think we currently have the technology falsify this problem but no one seems to be willing to employ the means to see if we can do it and it's mostly due to the ridicule the subject attracts...

Video are frowned on as evidence on this site and yours are considerably less than convincing. Again i ask you for the most convincing sighting you know of, I have a few but you are the OP of this thread...