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If you are limiting travel to going from Point A to Point B at a high rate of speed, then yes, you're right. The distances are too vast.
But even our own physicists no longer believe that going from Point A to Point B at a high rate of speed is the only way to travel the cosmos. We haven't figured out the how yet, but we are starting to understand the physics behind it. A civilization that is 300 or 3,000 years beyond our technological advancement? Who knows what they might have figured out?
Einstein's Theory of Relativity is one of just a couple theories that have no contradictory evidence whatsoever opposing it. He once said "No amount of supporting experiments can ever prove me right, but just one could prove me wrong." ...The point is, travel at speeds anywhere relativistic are probably not possible due to the amount of energy it would take to accelerate a sizeable mass that fast...Even at that, we shouldn't fall into the trap of assuming aliens would sense time as we do. To us a lifetime is 10^2 yrs. Maybe to them it's 10^9 yrs...and don't forget the Twin Paradox.
It's not the time or the distance that would necessarily prevent contact with aliens-- it's the infinitesimal probability that we could locate each other. ..RE: remote probes-- they'd need to be controlled via EM signals travelling at the speed of light-- it would just take too long to control it remotely. It would have to be some sort of self driving car that could react instantly to changing conditions-- certainly possible. We've almost got it right ourselves.
Worm holes do exist-- but only on the quantum level.* Even time is quantized and time does flow forward AND backward, but only on the quantum level. You'd have to get every little quark & photon in the system back to it's previous spot all at the same time to do it on the macro level.
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Originally Posted by Mark S.
I agree and did not claim otherwise.
I have seen a UFO three times in my life, one of which was truly weird and for which I can see no rational explanation based on our current technology. The other two were just odd. But I have absolutely no reason to think any of them had anything to do with extraterrestrials. Everyone needs to keep in mind what the U in UFO stands for.
Excellent point.
* Everything is quantized, even people: we have the electr-on, the phot-on, the prot-on in physics and the pers-on in psychology.
I've seen UFOs myself and some of them were really interesting. One I remember so well was that one night as a youngster (that's in the 70s) I and my friend were sitting in my car drinking beer and listening to tapes.
We were parked at the curb at my house and I was gazing at the night sky and I noticed two stars that was orange colored. The rest of the stars were white so they stood out. I pointed it out to my friend and he agreed.
As we were looking one of the orange star streaked away sideways. We sat up thinking whaa...? Did you see that? Yeah I did and we sat there staring at the lone orange star. We didn't know how long it took but finally that one streaked away skyward.
We were dumbfounded and were saying it's gotta be UFOs man.. yeah man... I never seen anything take off that fast.
Again it was in the mid 70s when I was running a car wash when my hand toweler was jumping around yelling hey look! Look up there! pointed to the sky. It was pretty cloudy that day and I didn't see anything but he kept pointing and I saw it between the clouds. It was an arrowhead shaped craft with a flat backend and what looked like exhaust ports. The craft was beige with black backend. No sound came from it at all. As it were we're practically next to the Air Force base so it has to be one of their experimental crafts. Probably before they created the Stealth.
Again in the 70s we had $1.50 carload drive in night and we got together for the Monday night at the movies. It's a double feature and one is a slasher movie which I don't care for. I walked back to where there are seats outside the building and sat down.
Got a good view of the night sky so I started star gazing (I like to do that). Deep in the space I saw something moving and I thought it was a satellite but it was moving in a straight line going further out. Funny I spotted it as it was like a pin head but the stars don't move so I noticed it.
It was going slow but I'm sure it was booking it out there. I was able to watch for a few minutes before it disappeared.
Since the 70s I believed in UFOs. Why should we be alone in the vast Universe?
Worm holes do exist-- but only on the quantum level.* Even time is quantized and time does flow forward AND backward, but only on the quantum level. You'd have to get every little quark & photon in the system back to it's previous spot all at the same time to do it on the macro level.
Seriously though ... everything you said is correct according to our current understanding of physics. And that is a BIG sticking point. We have only been figuring this stuff out for a few centuries. Imagine what a civilization could figure out given a few millennia. There may be forces all around us we haven't even discovered yet.
We aren't even the dog who is wandering through the master's library, wondering what all those chewy folded things are on the shelves. We're more like the flea on the back of the dog who has just figured out there is a dog.
By the way, "getting there" is only one of the many problems alien visitors would face.
Remember all those diseases colonial Europeans exchanged with Native Americans a few centuries ago? Millions died because they had no natural resistance to the bacteria, and they had only been separated for thousands of years.
Now imagine what would happen if an alien set foot on Earth or we set foot on an alien world. Even assuming we breathe the same ratio of oxygen, nitrogen, etc. (which is NOT a given), even the most innocent bacteria or pollen could prove a deadly toxin. Just smelling the foliage on an alien world could be a death sentence.
So on any voyages to other planets, the most valuable member of the crew won't be the red shirts with phasers. It'll be the micro-biologists.
Yes, in the original book that was set in England.
Was that the case on the infamous radio progam where New Jersey was invaded?
Right. The broadcast was based on HG Wells novel. They just changed the location to the US. It was broadcast by Orsen Welles. It was reported that observatories had seen a few odd explosions on Mars. The martians (somehow rapidly) arrived at Earth and landed on a farm at Grover's Mill, NJ.
Seriously though ... everything you said is correct according to our current understanding of physics. And that is a BIG sticking point. .
You're forgetting that we basically went from minimal knowledge of physics in the 18th century to working it all out in the 19th century-- everything from Dalton's atomic theory to Maxwell's theory of electromagnetics to quantum theory & relativity. In the 2oth century, we fleshed the basics out with details, but the major paradigm was unchanged...nothing new in 100 yrs now...and all the rules seem to hold everywhere we've looked in the Universe... and we haven't seen anything that can't be explained by our current theories.
Yes, I suppose there really could be ghosts and alternate universes, but the odds are against it. I wouldn't bet too much money on a new paradigm to be forthcoming, even from aliens.
An analogy to your line of reasoning: How did that Epstein guy wind u dead in his cell? It could be natural death. It could be suicide. It could be murder. It could be Martians....What probabilities would you assign to each of those choices?
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