Aliens

[James Dixon]

knowing nothing goes faster than light and even if it could would still a craft hundreds if not thousands of years to go to another galaxy or planet, can't we safely say we are not being visited by beings from another world, so all these sightings of UFOs must be coming from another plane of existence, another dimension, what other explanation could there be? I've got a headache just thinking about it. JRD.

[zapatos]

Another explanation could be that the sightings are not of aliens, whether from our plane of existence (whatever that is) or from another.

 

If you want to assume that the sightings are indeed of aliens, then I would think that visits from another world, rather than another plane of existence, is more likely, as we at least know that other worlds exist. The same cannot be said of other planes of existence.

 

As the universe is billions of years old, the fact that a trip from another planet to earth would take possibly thousands of years does not seem to rule out the possibility that aliens could be here.

[swansont]

what other explanation could there be?

 

The sightings were of something else?

[Phi for All]

knowing nothing goes faster than light and even if it could would still a craft hundreds if not thousands of years to go to another galaxy or planet, can't we safely say we are not being visited by beings from another world, so all these sightings of UFOs must be coming from another plane of existence, another dimension, what other explanation could there be? I've got a headache just thinking about it. JRD.

 

Plane of existence? Strike that from your vocabulary, it's a fictional reference that doesn't exist in science.

 

Another dimension? Dimension has a special meaning in science; longitude, latitude, altitude, time, these are dimensions we use to specify where something is, was, or will be.

 

You're looking for "alternate universe" most likely, part of the multiverse hypothesis. Still, as zapatos mentions, aliens from our own universe would be much more likely to explain UFO sightings than aliens from another universe. And as swansont mentions, that they weren't aliens at all, that they were something much more mundane, is even more likely. The likeliest explanation, as a matter of fact, and that's something science is always on the lookout for.

[DrP]

About a decade ago I saw a documentery about UFOs. It's opening claim was that it could now reveal secrets that were covered up by governments regarding experiments that were kept secret for obvious reasons.... apparently after 50 years these things could be revealed. The program pretty much said that EVERY UFO sighting from 50 years ago and before were due to goverment experiments (In the UK and the US, so by assumption in the USSR also) - They took each account and and explained why people saw what they saw. They were doing experiments on ion lifter type flying saucers and stuff. I have NEVER found that documentry online since or found any record of it anywhere... I recon that maybe these things were revealed due the 50 year thing, but quickly trod down again after the documentry revealed too much... who knows...?

 

The point is - it is far more likely that these sightings are from some kind of secret experiment than from an alien space craft or some wierd intrusion from another dimention... OR, as swansont suggested, it could be something else entirely.

[EdEarl]

Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) fully explains the phenomenon.

 

Unidentified: not identified or recognized

Flying: moving swiftly or floating, fluttering, waving, hanging, or moving freely in the air

Object: anything that may be apprehended intellectually

 

In other words, the object may be real, a mirage, or imagined, moving quickly perhaps through the air, and we do not know what it is. Some UFO sightings have been explained, and others have not. Thus far, no aliens have been positively identified, as far as we know. Anyone may speculate.

[sunshaker]

To "our knowledge" nothing can go faster than c,

But we are a young race, If there are races out there millions or billions of years older than us I am certeain they would have found a way around this speed limit, I have no doubt we will.

Perhaps extra dimensions may be a way around this as they seem more and more likely to exist.

Maybe our universe is like Dr Who's tardis larger on the inside than the outside, and perhaps one day we will be able to step outside this dimension and step back in anywhere any time in the universe.

[swansont]

To "our knowledge" nothing can go faster than c,

But we are a young race, If there are races out there millions or billions of years older than us I am certeain they would have found a way around this speed limit, I have no doubt we will.

We have a lot science that's well-tested that's based on c being the limit, so this is baseless conjecture.

[sunshaker]

We have a lot science that's well-tested that's based on c being the limit, so this is baseless conjecture.

Perhaps at this moment in our understanding, but it seems that the main problem is an object gains mass at higher speeds so at the speed of c an object would have infinite mass needing infinite energy to move an object at c.

 

But we do not yet fully understand "mass", does the "higgs field" give mass to a particle/object, and I know we do not fully understand this field, and if we ever do we may be able to prevent said object interacting with field so no gain in mass ruling out this law of c.

 

Like I said we are a young race just beginning to understand our universe.

[swansont]

Perhaps at this moment in our understanding, but it seems that the main problem is an object gains mass at higher speeds so at the speed of c an object would have infinite mass needing infinite energy to move an object at c.

 

But we do not yet fully understand "mass", does the "higgs field" give mass to a particle/object, and I know we do not fully understand this field, and if we ever do we may be able to prevent said object interacting with field so no gain in mass ruling out this law of c.

 

Like I said we are a young race just beginning to understand our universe.

 

Mass does not increase with speed (unless you redefine what you mean by mass), but that's another lesson. There is no evidence around that relativity is wrong, only that there is an issue making GR compatible with QM. Everything involved with the Higgs predictions and discovery are compatible with relativity. Thus there is no physics you can argue here.

 

We don't know everything ≠ we know nothing

[Moontanman]

I already explained where they were mostly likely coming from! Do I have to do it again?

[Robittybob1]

I already explained where they were mostly likely coming from! Do I have to do it again?

I haven't heard that one, so yes.

[Moontanman]

I haven't heard that one, so yes.

 

 

Intelligent species who want to colonise their solar system do so by making artificial colonies, when they manage to control fusion they can more to the resources in the Oort cloud and Kuiper belt, use carbon nano tubes and other organic materials as construction material, spin them for gravity, they could slowly move from object making copies of their colonies, since oort clouds are thought to often reach half way to the nearest star and possibly such clouds of objects and ice particles already exist in space such civilizations would abandon planets completely and occupy the galaxy's clouds of ice particles and dust and small icy bodies. Moving from one star to another would just mean a short hop to the next oort cloud and since you already have your home with you all you are really doing is either topping off your tanks of expendables or stopping to make a new colony you could colonise the entire galaxy without ever using earth like planets, if you happen to be in the oort cloud of an inhabited solar system you might study the inhabitants but have little to no real contact or interaction with them.

The point is there is no super science required to colonize the galaxy..

[swansont]

 

The point is there is no super science required to colonize the galaxy..

 

The science of a sustainable isolated biosphere and that of controllable, sustained fusion still evade us. Your "short hop" is still light years of travel.

[MigL]

I thought the 'aliens' in the observed UFOs were inner Earth mole people.

[Moontanman]

 

The science of a sustainable isolated biosphere and that of controllable, sustained fusion still evade us. Your "short hop" is still light years of travel.

 

We don't need a completely sustainable isolated biosphere under these circumstances, fusion how ever is a missing piece, of course that is just 20 years away...

It is also important to notice this is a falsifiable hypothesis, such colonies should be visible to sensitive IR telescopes, I had hoped the IR telescope that stopped working a while back might do the trick but I have since learned it was not sensitive enough to pick up small objects that far away.

 

Even if true I don't think this would explain much more than the radar detected glowing lights in the sky type UFO, it seems doubtful that such aliens would risk manned craft or their own lives in gravity wells where biological contamination is possible. Drones set to observe and see how we react to that observation seem much more reasonable.

 

Especially when people begin to describe humanoid aliens my horse feathers meter goes off scale...

[DrP]

Did anyone else actually see the documentry I posted about earlier?

[Moontanman]

Did anyone else actually see the documentry I posted about earlier?

 

 

I'm not sure, I've seen so many of them, most have an agenda rather than any real research, they are either made by true believers or debunkers, almost never even neutral.

[Robittybob1]

 

 

I'm not sure, I've seen so many of them, most have an agenda rather than any real research, they are either made by true believers or debunkers, almost never even neutral.

Which camp are you in?

[Moontanman]

Which camp are you in?

 

 

I refuse to camp, I look at the available evidence and simply say we don't know or we do know or in some cases it's deeply puzzling but no way to be sure at this time... Most stuff from after photoshop is junk, I'd estimate more than 99% of sightings to be hoaxes or something conventional seen under unusual circumstances but there still are sightings that require some real thought and defy explanation even if the air force was determined to give us one, some almost as unbelievable as aliens, slow comets and slow meteors being a couple of examples..

[John]

We don't know the limits of technology just yet, and as zapatos says, a few thousand years is nothing compared to the age of the universe.

A sufficiently advanced civilization may have accomplished at least one of the following:

 

1. Overcome the difficulties involved in constructing something akin to an Alcubierre drive.

2. Construct an artificial intelligence or achieve whole brain emulation.

3. Perfect cryopreservation.

4. Avoid senescence and death.

 

Even without any of that:

1. Time dilation renders long (from our perspective) trips at relativistic speeds shorter from the perspective of the traveler.

2. An extraterrestrial's conception and experience of time may differ significantly from ours, such that a few thousand years of travel isn't unreasonable.

3. A spacefaring civilization could be nomadic, living on generation ships or something similar.

Of course, depending on their location and remote sensing capabilities, an alien civilization may not even notice our presence, much less decide to pay us a visit; and the probability that they'll randomly stumble upon us seems fairly low.

[swansont]

One can just as easily posit that a sufficiently advanced civilization would have solved the problems that would have driven any material need to colonize the galaxy.

 

At this point, this is science fiction.

[James Dixon]

reading all your very interesting messages and some of the emphasis on what we don't know made me think just what we don't know, for instance, Gravity, we don't really know what it is or how it really works, Oceans, there are theories where all that water came from but no definite answers to convince anyone, Lightning, does any one have a simple exclamation of how it works and how it is so powerful. There are so many mysteries in the universe that we will never understand and those that we think we do have no real substance, I think we are not made to understand them until later, but, gives us a lot to think about which is part of human nature. James Dixon.

[Phi for All]

reading all your very interesting messages and some of the emphasis on what we don't know made me think just what we don't know, for instance, Gravity, we don't really know what it is or how it really works, Oceans, there are theories where all that water came from but no definite answers to convince anyone, Lightning, does any one have a simple exclamation of how it works and how it is so powerful. There are so many mysteries in the universe that we will never understand and those that we think we do have no real substance, I think we are not made to understand them until later, but, gives us a lot to think about which is part of human nature. James Dixon.

 

I think you should look at the misconceptions you had in your opening post, and then look at the knowledge that was shared with you. I think it's sad that all you took away from this is more misconceptions. Just because we don't know everything doesn't mean we don't know anything.

 

Your last sentence fills me with sadness. Postponing a search for knowledge until later (?) seems like giving up.

[TheDivineFool]

I like to keep an open mind on the matter. Anything's possible.

 

I respect science for its enlightened methodology and achievements. However, is it me or is there an uncomfortable silence since Quantum physics and Relativity, around half a century ago? When I was a teenager, I was so excited at the speed of scientific progress. Now, I sense that the science party is fizzling out. Is this a fact or are scientific breakthroughs being kept secret? Perhaps I'm not reading enough.

 

I also thought the spirit of science was curiosity, and self-doubt; 'I wonder' and 'Am I sure?' Science minus these defining characters becomes non-science; a dogmatic oppressive mind yoke.

 

I understand that current scientific knowledge sets limits but to insist self-assuredly that x is impossible because it would violate scientific principle y is narrow mindedness.

 

What is possible and impossible is decided by the universe, not by science. Am I wrong?