Moontanman

Is this what you meant when you said you have evidence of god? A higher power is a possibility so is a brobdingnagian creature that excretes universes and doesn't know it's own shit. We have no need of a higher power to explain the universe, no one is saying that random chance is responsible for anything and all science says about a cause is that we don't know. We don't know is honest, saying you know when you don't is not honest...

I live within 60 miles of myrtle beach, I live near carolina beach...

All airplanes can at least fly to the crash site with one engine, probably beat the para medics there by 30 minutes or so...

I agree, we are very lucky to know you Daedelus!

Hey I live in NC! Beautiful music!

I'm too old, mean, and ugly to die..

I await your thread with baited breath..

Do it, stop threatening to do it...

No, what you are asserting is woo until you provide evidence to the contrary it will remain supernatural woo... Give us an example, an example would be much better than the baseless assertions you have so far used. I look forward to this thread. That is why it's called woo... please do so, so far you appear to be pulling woo out of your anus.. You keep saying this, time to show it... I for one look forward to your threads about the reality of a god.

If this idea that you won't bake a cake due to religious belief then any business that does this should be required to list the parts of society they will not serve plainly some place like the front door so the rest of us can know who these bigots are and not patronise them if you disagree with them... Personally I think this is just a way to bring back the ideas prevalent in some areas where they used to post signs proclaiming no negroes or asians. You can use this religious excuse to bar almost anyone from your business. Everyone should have the right to know who your bigotry encompasses..

Guys, let's drop this train of thought, it's off topic and unnecessarily diverts away from the topic at hand.

This is a science forum, there is a specific definition of evidence in science. I'm not sure what other definitions of evidence you are using but unless they agree with scientific evidence they do not apply to science or reality for that matter... Small probabilities happen all the time, no hight power is necessary. Yes the idea of a higher power is woo unless you define it and provide evidence...

As far as I can tell this says nothing about their intelligence or brain size... mistermack, you made an assertion, the rules say you have to provide the source of that assertion, telling someone to read up on the subject is not how that works.

Arguably bacteria are the most successful life forms on the planet and everything else is just playing catch up... Intelligence, our particular type of intelligence, could actually be a dead end. There are some indications that we are responsible for a mass extinction that is going on all around us and if it continues looks to take us out as well. Intelligence might be an evolutionary dead end... One in a billion you say? that would indicate at least 300 technologically advanced civilizations just in our galaxy... I am really not sure what you are saying here, complete mystery seems like something you should be able to give a citation for. Mechanisms is also a bit less than helpful in this context, it seems clear that our complex behaviors and tool making and using ability either drives our brains size and complexity or the brains size and complexity drives those behaviors. Both of these would be called mechanisms. I think we need a definition of higher intelligence before we can constructively discuss this. Other species already use technology, I'm not sure what you are saying here. Yes we take technology to an extreme no other animal does but even molluscs use technology. Citation please, I can't see how we can say how intelligent an extinct animal was. All very good points, evolution can be likened to an arms race, each side ratchets up to counter the other. Just enough, the goal, if it can be said to exist at all, to allow reproduction of the species. The difference is also driven by body plans, a bison with 10 times the intelligence of a human could still not use a spear much make a spear to ward off a lizard much less a wolf. What would be an obvious sign of intelligence increase? Brain size is not the only indicator of intelligence, the Flores Island "hobbits" had small brains yet they made and used tools. While brain size is no doubt important brain complexity is important as well and a genius brain is not very useful unless the body plan allows intelligence to be used. I'd like to see that as well...

If a planet has life this becomes even more important, in fact it is at the heart of why I don't think colonising planets is an option that would be used. Life is not necessarily the same thing every place. In fact there is no reason to think that life on another planet would be compatible with Earth life. Various chemicals we use have possible replacements and could very well have just been what we started with. other planets could start with similar but different chemicals. On the other hand life on another planet that is identical to our could be the most dangerous to expose yourself to. If I say something is the result of something else we don't have an explanation for the comparison becomes meaningless in explanatory power. Sadly this is the rule rather than the exception... Trying to judge the motivations of aliens is not constructive. You are correct, it is not extraordinary but I think it is enough to justify real scientific interest. I doubt we can get that level of evidence without them actually landing on the white house lawn. Can you suggest how such evidence could be found? Again, aliens are under no compulsion to make sense to us... Another really odd thing about the early debunkers of UFOs was their propensity for using excuses that really made no sense. a couple i really liked were "slow moving comets" or "slow moving meteors" Philip Klaus who was one of the more famous debunkers used these as explanations for UFO sightings, neither make any sense yet they were touted as valid by Project Blue Book...

I think that the evidence you suggest is not a reasonable expectation, we humans take such extraordinary efforts to not contaminate places like Mars it seems unlikely that aliens would want to contaminate the Earth with refuse. There are lots of odd atmospheric phenomena, some like ball lightning are still mysteries themselves and cannot really be invoked to explain another mystery. A light in the sky or a mystery blip on a radar screen are really meaningless. Singular events are evidence of nothing but an unexplained singular event. I appreciate that. I start out assuming that ET must follow the same laws of physics we do and the expanding exponentially idea isn't really necessary for this to work. It just shows that individual planets are not necessary and may indeed be avoided for various reasons. It's interesting that we seem to think that the US Air Force is the end all of this. other countries do investegate and have a somewhat different take on the issue. It's easy to dismiss sightings if they are not seen as a whole, various small snippets can be explained but this does not suggest the entire sighting is bogus. The Washington, DC sighting has a huge number of red flags that should be acknowledged by debunkers but are ignored because they make the sighting more difficult to dismiss. Weather inversion? At least two independent radars tracked the same objects none of these experienced operators agreed with this explanation. Experienced operators said the objects did not resemble weather inversions. People with little to no experience in this area are the ones who insisted it was weather inversions. The UFOs themselves were seen at both close range and distant ranges by many people who were not just independent observers but were pilots and ground crew. many civilians called in to report the objects even though the objects hadn't been reported at this point on any news services. One jet was surrounded by the objects and the pilot asked what do i do, no one had any thing to tell him. ( I think this may be exaggerated somewhat)The objects interacted with civilian aircraft and military aircraft and the sighting occurred over two weekends and persisted for many hours. One interesting tidbit was that these sightings had been predicted by other observers due to similar sightings being seen in the days before up the coast and each night the sightings drew closer to DC. These were dismissed or ignored by the powers that be but others wondered openly what was going to happen when they appeared over the Capital. The objects did appear to have some intelligent control, our own current use of drones which wasn't thought of at the time seems to shine new light on the sighting. I doubt that UFOs are piloted, I have always considered the idea that they would be piloted to be a artifact of the times and human thought. As we have discussed the vast majority of sightings can be explained and many of them are straight up hoaxes or hallucinations. Any sighting that describes "humanoid" aliens is in my book highly suspect. There is no reason to assume that evolution would work out to the same body plans or shapes for them as it has for us. There so many clear and obvious pictures from the early years I could fill pages with them. They are either proof positive or hoaxes no other possibility works. It is sad that the subject of UFOs has become an international game of who can hoax them best, the signal to noise ratio is ridiculous...

I am going to have to concede the idea of colonization of the galaxy being fast. I can't find the info which is as good as it not being there. It came up quite some time ago as a rebuttal to the fermi paradox concerning the idea that if aliens ever existed they would have quickly colonised the entire galaxy so fast no one else would have had the time to do so. This is really not part of my argument to begin with so I think I can concede and still continue. Yes Ender, you are correct and my argument is that we can directly verify the premise of aliens occupying places like the oort cloud via their waste heat. My original premise has to do with whether or not some UFO sightings are evidence of non human technology. I think they are and I gave the 1952 washington dc sighting as an example. This is an old thread and contains things not relevant to what we are discussing now. I have to go and mow grass, I'll give it some thought. This subject is so willy nilly I think we need specific guidelines to try and separate the wheat from the chaff on both sides..

My Migraine is still giving me a fit, I can't at this time find a link to the site that shows how the galaxy could be occupied in less than 250,000 years with the speed of each ship being limited to 0.1% of c. I understand that the top speed is quite slow but the volume enclosed goes up quite fast and that is the point and this happens much faster when you ignore planets and just use things like intra galactic materials. It works quite a bit like the dyson swarm but controlled fusion busts the limit of just using Solar power. I'll try to continue this when i feel better, thinking straight is difficult now, for some reason all I get is repeats of Fermi's paradox and what i am talking about doesn't depend on fermi's paradox although it could affect the idea.

Ok, I'm doing a little better, migraines are a bitch! You seem to be stuck on the idea of one ship traveling to another star to set up camp. This is not what is happening, One artificial world traveling at 0.1% c travels at an average speed of 0.1% c if they become two habitats traveling at 0.1%c then between them they are traveling at 0.2%c. The individuals are still traveling at 0.1%c but the two are traveling at the equivalent of 0.2%c. 1000 such habitats are traveling at the equivalent of 0.1%c times 1000. Not in a straight line but they would be encompassing a volume of space equal to a much much faster speed. These colonies have no destination, no trip time to a destination, just expanding as they encounter natural resources. The habitats are the equivalent of generational starships except they are not traveling to any specific place. The best analogy i can think of is releasing a pair of mice on NA in NYC, no individual mouse could make it across NA but by the time mice appeared in LA there would be billions of them and their forward progress in all directions would be equivalent to many times the speed of an individual mouse capable of colonising hundreds of square miles a day. Each mouse would never travel faster than a mouse normally can but the ever expanding front of mice would travel at outrageous combined speeds and cover many square miles a day. In my scenario the galaxy could be colonised in less time than it takes the galaxy to make one revolution even at very reasonable speeds. BTW, the Fermi paradox is quite easily explained by technological life being rare. If there were one million technological civilizations in the Milky Way they would average being one in every eight million cubic light years (my math may be way off here) if I am close to being right then none of them would be close enough to be aware of us at this stage. On top of that there is the fact that anything but intentional signals fade out due to interference from dust, ions, and radio emissions well before 2 light years. Looking at it like that we would be aware of a civilization equal to our on a planet orbiting the nearest star...

You seem to be stuck with the idea that the colony craft will be going some place specific No individual craft has to travel at high speeds, it's the average speed that matters. One space craft would reproduce into millions colonising the entire Oort cloud or much of it and the Oort cloud of one star is thought to come very close to the oort cloud of the next. Since these colonies have no destination but simply move very slowly from one source of materials to another, reproduce and move on eventually you will have billions of colonies all moving toward billions of goals. http://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/science/physics-and-astronomy/how-long-would-it-take-colonise-the-galaxy This link assumes we colonise planets but if we have no need of planets then every star can be colonised, even sceptical estimates assert the entire galaxy could be colonised in less than one galactic revolution ~ 250,000,000 years. This is an eye blink in cosmic time. Since the Oort cloud of the nearest star comes very close to the oort cloud of Sol and reproducing colonies could make the jump in a few thousand years without even knowing it. There is goal destination only expansion and as the expanding cloud of habitats gets bigger it's average speed gets ever higher. Since we will not be going in a straight line and our goal is to expand in any or all directions the straight line speed is meaningless... Again you are thinking of this as though we are colonising planets, nothing could be further from the truth, stars with no planets would be as desirable or even more so than stars with planets. All stars and even dust clouds would supply the necessary resources. http://www.sentientdevelopments.com/2012/01/new-mathematical-study-reveals-that-our.html Guys, I am really not feeling well, I will continue this in a day or two when I can think clearly. I know the info i am looking for is out there and .1% of the speed of light is the most often used speed but for some reason i can't find anything significant on colonizing the galaxy with artificial habitats. I know it's there, I have sourced it before but I am missing it for some reason. A migraine is throwing me off since this is one of my main areas of interest I know the info exists. I will get back to you guys in a day or so..

I am not drawing any conclusions I am suggesting a path to investigate something that has been claimed to be impossible to investigate... Probably hundreds if not thousands of years but how much do people who are riding around in an RV worry about travel times? You would be taking your entire world with you, travel time would be meaningless like worrying about how long it will take the Earth to complete an orbit around the galactic core.

I am not proposing traveling at high speed, this would be the main point of my idea. Again am not proposing a fusion powered rocket. One more time, I'll try to be more clear. What I am proposing is that technological civilizations would have little use for planets and be more likely to use material from interstellar space, Oort clouds, and Kuiper belt areas to make artificial habitats and slowly, very slowly, travel as from one small icy body to another, using these resources to replace lost volities and very occasionally build more habitats. Far more livable surface area far faster than trying to colonise planets. Think of it as living in a RV traveling around the country, speed is no longer a factor, only finding resources to replace volatiles and to build new RVs along the way when your population in the RV gets to a certain point. A fusion powerplant would provide energy to run your habitat and to slowly move your habitat.

There is evidence, the quality of this evidence can be debated but not the fact it exists. The idea of civilizations colonising the galaxy in the way a propose in an answer to the rebuttal of aliens visiting us is so unlikely due to the distances and speeds involved. My bad I misread what you were saying, sorry.