UFOs

Do I think we are the only sentient beings in the universe, hell no. The universe is so incredibly large that there are bound to be countless other intelligent beings in the universe. The conundrum is the great distances between inhabited planets. Any other species that have the technology to overcome those great distances would be well advanced beyond us. Given that if they became aware of our existence I doubt they would make their presence known. They would probably monitor us to see what happens. I suspect the real test is can intelligent beings keep from destroying themselves long enough to make the scientific advances necessary for inter-stellar travel. I suspect very few ever achieve that. Look at us we are rapidly using up our natural resources with on alternatives available. We have the ability to destroy ourselves but not the stability or insight to adopt a sustainable life style. Stephen Hawking is an amazing physicist but when he recently said that we will have to leave this planet to sustain ourselves I just laughed. Stephen we aren't even close to having the technology to do that your idea is a joke. In the meantime we need make this planet last and not be on a headlong dash to use up all of our resources as fast as possible. Who knows how long it would take us to achieve inter-stellar travel it could be 10's of thousands of years. I don't think we have much of a chance to make this planet last long enough has much of a chance. Meanwhile the other sentient beings monitoring us are thinking there goes another planet self destructing.

Stephen we aren't even close to having the technology to do that your idea is a joke

Click to expand...

I think you misunderstood his drift, hes was pointing out that we can't carry on the way we are, He also pointed out when we do leave WE wouldn't be going the rich will leave the rest of the populous to sort out there mess. Personally i can't wait for the day the rich f**k off and leave us the world will be a better place for it. :clapping:

Actually we are close. Haven't you seen the spacex plans to put 100 people on mars all at once. That ship design is complete and fully based on available tech we have right now. Yes it has still yet to be built and tested, but we are certainly close for sure.

And then there's blue origin, space hab, and nasa. And they are just the US based entities. Theres also india and china in the mix, and even russia is struggling to get people out there. Oh, we're closer than you might think.

I've never personally had any interaction with UFO's but I've heard some strange stories from people I know. The one that still sticks out to me the most is when my high school history teacher told us he was abducted back in the 90s when he was camping in Colorado. He described the infamous flash of light and not being able to remember anything the next day. I have to believe that when there are so many instances of this that there has to be some truth to the stories. I just hope that we know how to handle relations with aliens when we do meet face to face. As someone else said earlier I'd rather not see our reality turn into a Twilight Zone episode like To Serve Man. If we are invaded I think it would be more paranoia based like Monsters on Maple Street or just playing with human emotions like in Mr Dingle. Now I have the strange urge to make a Twilight Zone thread somewhere :catsmile:

Spacex might build a ship large enough for 100 people, but, if it isn't large enough to hold a sizeable wheat field, beer production won't be sustainable and the will to survive would eventually evaporate.

A scarier thought would be that President Trump and acting First Lady Ivanka could be self-selected to blast off into space to become the next Adam and Eve.

Drifter said:

Spacex might build a ship large enough for 100 people, but, if it isn't large enough to hold a sizeable wheat field, beer production won't be sustainable and the will to survive would eventually evaporate.

A scarier thought would be that President Trump and acting First Lady Ivanka could be self-selected to blast off into space to become the next Adam and Eve.

Click to expand...

Lol, ever hear of hydroponics? Pop-Sci also once did an artical about a company in dubai that is/was planning to build an indoor farm skyscraper too. I wonder how that went.

Where we're going, we don't need fields.

And no. They will be selected to blast off in space so we can shoot them into the sun. They just won't be told that part.

I feel that if Non-Terrestrial Intelligences have visited this planet, it would likely be to study our primitive culture. As to the really X-Files type of stuff, I'm more skeptical. All we have to do is look at the news or even the Internet to find plenty of reasons for NTIs to avoid contact. It would likely be extraordinarily hazardous for the visitors.

Amaya said:

I've never personally had any interaction with UFO's but I've heard some strange stories from people I know. The one that still sticks out to me the most is when my high school history teacher told us he was abducted back in the 90s when he was camping in Colorado. He described the infamous flash of light and not being able to remember anything the next day. I have to believe that when there are so many instances of this that there has to be some truth to the stories. I just hope that we know how to handle relations with aliens when we do meet face to face. As someone else said earlier I'd rather not see our reality turn into a Twilight Zone episode like To Serve Man. If we are invaded I think it would be more paranoia based like Monsters on Maple Street or just playing with human emotions like in Mr Dingle. Now I have the strange urge to make a Twilight Zone thread somewhere :catsmile:

Click to expand...

There is in fact a phenomenon known as Sleep Paralysis that would explain such "encounters." I definitely keep an open mind, and can't say for certain that abductions do not occur... but from a biological perspective, I don't think humans are terribly interesting, and the little grey men would be better off abducting lab mice. ^.^;

EDIT: OK, there is SOME interesting trivia regarding humans. We're one of the very few species on the planet to share a near-universal allergy to urushiol, the oil produced by plants such as so-called "poison ivy" which is in fact a food source for most other creatures and not inherently poisonous at all. We're just allergic to it. Though somehow, I don't expect facts such as this to intrigue an alien species quite as much as it intrigues, say, me. ^.^

Sapphyre said:

There is in fact a phenomenon known as Sleep Paralysis that would explain such "encounters." I definitely keep an open mind, and can't say for certain that abductions do not occur... but from a biological perspective, I don't think humans are terribly interesting, and the little grey men would be better off abducting lab mice. ^.^;

EDIT: OK, there is SOME interesting trivia regarding humans. We're one of the very few species on the planet to share a near-universal allergy to urushiol, the oil produced by plants such as so-called "poison ivy" which is in fact a food source for most other creatures and not inherently poisonous at all. We're just allergic to it. Though somehow, I don't expect facts such as this to intrigue an alien species quite as much as it intrigues, say, me. ^.^

Click to expand...

Good point, us humans are quite boring, but at the same time it's so easy to play with our emotions and make us turn on each other or lure us into a false sense of security. If aliens did "invade" it probably wouldn't be for colonization but just to have a bit of fun at our expense. And yes mice would be more interesting since they are the most intelligent species on Earth after all :catsmile:

Amaya said:

Good point, us humans are quite boring, but at the same time it's so easy to play with our emotions and make us turn on each other or lure us into a false sense of security. If aliens did "invade" it probably wouldn't be for colonization but just to have a bit of fun at our expense. And yes mice would be more interesting since they are the most intelligent species on Earth after all :catsmile:

Click to expand...

Haha, hopefully they will discover the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything... ^.^

As far as turning on each other, to be perfectly honest I think historically we've done an excellent job of holding each other down. We don't need any provocation for that. I've sometimes said to people that we COULD have been on the moon thousands of years ago, and they usually think I'm exaggerating. I'm not. We wasted too much time playing king-of-the-mountain, but the technology to bring us into space was never terribly far away. If people had been interested in discovering and developing it at the time, instead of one-upsmanship...

Anyway, I don't mean to hijack the thread. ^.^;; Just my $0.02.

Sapphyre said:

Haha, hopefully they will discover the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything... ^.^

As far as turning on each other, to be perfectly honest I think historically we've done an excellent job of holding each other down. We don't need any provocation for that. I've sometimes said to people that we COULD have been on the moon thousands of years ago, and they usually think I'm exaggerating. I'm not. We wasted too much time playing king-of-the-mountain, but the technology to bring us into space was never terribly far away. If people had been interested in discovering and developing it at the time, instead of one-upsmanship...

Anyway, I don't mean to hijack the thread. ^.^;; Just my $0.02.

Click to expand...

Oh youre right. The dark ages alone started by setting us back 100 years in technology. It then lasted about 500 more years before coming to an end. It then took us another 100 years to recover back to where we were when it started.

That one event alone set us back 700 years technologically. Think about it, had it not happened we would be a literal 700 years more advanced than we are now. And look how far we've come in the last 700 years.

And then there's disasters, manmade and natural. The library of Alexandria was a bastion for advancement, till it burned down. The antikythera device was an actual computer built around 100bc, but was lost due to a storm at sea. And there are so many more examples that saying were were set back by 2000 years is probably a grose understatement.