Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
There is hundreds of Billions stars in our galaxy, there is hundred of billions galaxy in our hamas, there are hundred billions of hamas in the OBSERVABLE universe... And you still think we are alone...?
My issue with the Fermi paradox is that it does not even take into account the size of the universe... Maybe one reason we have not found any signal is because the universe is so big signals have not yet reached us... The light takes 15 billions of year to reach us (from some part of the universe) and yet we believe that we will find a radio signal that was launched 3 millions years ago...? And also, build a time travel machine, go there with your phone let us say 100 years ago and display a bluetooth signal... Do you think somebody will receive it...? The Fermi paradox assume that yes...
I would love to shake hand with a technological alien one day. In fact, I dream about it. Unfortunately, I might have to keep dreaming for a long time, as we have not seen any evidence of E.T. These educated folks are just as interested as I am. Here are their thoughts:
That being said, humans have only been broadcasting for several decades, which is peanuts next to the size of the Milky Way, so we've barely covered any ground.
That assumes other civilizations would employ the same technology we do, but that's a baseless assumption.
While we have 7 continents, it doesn't logically follow that all other planets also have 7 continents. They might have only one, or two or three smaller ones. I mention that, because geography impacts political, social, economic and cultural development, and all of that impacts technology.
Just because we use electromagnetic radiation to communicate, it doesn't logically follow that all other civilizations do as well.
Other civilizations may have found other ways to communicate, or it may be that their atmospheric composition blocks electromagnetic radiation or degrades it to the point the signals would be unintelligible or unrecognizable to us, or they moved on to other better technology.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rstevens62
It made me wonder, if these were truly some advanced civilization from somewhere else...why has their aircraft and technology remained the same for 1000s of years?
Except it hasn't. And, if something works, why change it?
Quote:
Originally Posted by cjseliga
I wrote the same exact thing in another thread on the Unexplained Mysteries and Paranormal subforum:
That's the thing, a lot of people, including many on C-D, like to use UFO and aliens/extraterrestrials interchangeably. A UFO (Unidentified Flying Object) doesn't have to have alien/extraterrestrial origins.
It does if it's performance characteristics exceed Earth-based technology.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Quietude
Or varying levels of methane (again, a weak indicator).
That's nonsensical.
Methane is subject to the photo-electric effect. Whatever Methane existed in Earth's atmosphere at the time of its formation was destroyed by the photo-electric effect within a few short years.
That's why Methane is measured in parts per Billion, because it's impossible for Methane to accumulate in quantities of parts per Million.
UV-A, UV-B and UV-C destroy atmospheric Methane.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Quietude
Why serious SETI types keep putting so much credence on this rather whimsical framework for astro-department cocktail party debate mystifies me.
SETI's function is largely disinformation.
If you lived in Miami and lost your car/house keys, would you get on a plane and fly to Seattle to look for your car/house keys?
Why would you do that? You've never been to Seattle. You live, work and play in Miami.
Is that not the stupidest thing ever?
Yet, that's exactly what SETI does.
If SETI was truly interested in finding extraterrestrial life, they wouldn't be looking in other galaxies, they'd be looking in their own back-yard.
You already know life exists in Milky Way, so why not look there? And, you know where life is in the Milky Way, in a particular spiral arm. And, you know G-Class stars support life, because our Sun is one.
Again, why not look there?
Because the goal is to look where you know you won't find anything so you can say you haven't found anything.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Quietude
Asserting that the government has some positive or irrefutable evidence of UFOs being alien craft, or the existence and visitation by aliens, and this information has remained completely opaque for decades, without even a valid leak that the evidence exists (regardless of what it actually is) is right up there with most new testament miracles in requiring deep faith to even consider.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cjseliga
Especially with recent incidents by people like Snowden and Manning, one would think some millennial engineer working out at Groom Lake with Top Secret Clearance would have decided by now to just "f-it all" and release classified information (after moving to Russia of course!) about what the government knows or has about aliens, unless there is nothing of course!
That's indicative of a total and complete lack of understanding of everything.
The intelligence community is compartmentalized. People have access to a part, but not all parts and certainly not the whole.
The people who do have access to the whole tend to be zealots and fanatics.
Their belief in what they're doing is so insanely intense, the thought of telling you would never even cross their minds.
You also have a lack of understanding of security clearances. A mere Top Secret clearance doesn't get it.
For example, your Top Secret would never trump my Top Secret ATOMAL or Top Secret CRYPTO, and I held both at different times.
So, I wouldn't tell you anything and if the circumstances were such that you had a job to do, I would tell you only the bare minimum you need to know to properly do your job, and nothing more.
I knew there were chemical weapons at Clausen. President Reagan did not know. Chancellor Helmut Kohl did not know. But, I knew.
Did President Bush know? I'd have to say it's quite likely he did. After all, Bush was a CIA agent, and rather high in the hierarchy and eventually was the CIA Director. In order for Bush to do his job as CIA Director properly, and that job was assessing threats, including terrorist threats, he would need to know.
But Reagan and Kohl didn't need to know that to do their jobs. I needed to know in order to do my job, which was playing with chemical and nuclear weapons.
I mention that, because that information was never stored electronically.
In fact, it was expressly and specifically barred from ever being stored electronically. So, try as you might, you'd never find that information on any computer anywhere in the World.
It was all on paper. Those papers were kept in a safe at the Pentagon, and only a handful of people walking this Earth had access to it (I was never one of them).
Not only that, but no one person could ever open that safe, because it required two people. There were two combination dials and no one was ever allowed to know the combination to both dials. It's usually referred to as red-key/yellow-key (even when keys are not in use). That's a safe-guard, part of the "two-person rule."
The two-person rule is in effect for any item declared vital to national security by the responsible custodian. And, it's not just any two people, it's two people of equal knowledge. I have to be able to detect if someone is performing an unauthorized procedure, like when we're talking the bomb or something like that.
Anyway, that is how the US government stores super-sensitive information, information that rises higher than being merely "vital to national security."
So, if you thought information about ETs or ET vehicles was floating freely around on US government computers for anyone and everyone to access any time they wanted to access it, you thought wrong, because that's not even remotely close to how it works.
Whatever information the US government has would certainly be super-sensitive and never exist in electronic form. It would exist solely in paper format and those papers would be kept somewhere in a safe, or probably multiple safes so that people can access the parts, but never the whole, and those safes would be both strictly limited and monitored for access.
Dream all you want, but there'll never be a Snowden. That's not going to happen, because it isn't even remotely possible to happen.
If I were to venture a guess, it's probably multiple safes, because your government does type-classify ET aircraft based on their design and theorized method of propulsion. Your government probably won't admit that, but they do, so all that information would be stored separately.
That assumes other civilizations would employ the same technology we do, but that's a baseless assumption.
True, but I was addressing this from a human angle. Human broadcasts have only covered several dozen light years, in a galaxy that spans 100k. So the sample size itself is already quite limited, without taking into account alien teechnology.
Quote:
While we have 7 continents, it doesn't logically follow that all other planets also have 7 continents. They might have only one, or two or three smaller ones. I mention that, because geography impacts political, social, economic and cultural development, and all of that impacts technology.
Indeed, but we're talking about interstellar reach here. Why does a planet's geography factor into it? Any species that has not even mastered basic spaceflight would be out of the question in the first place. They would be unaware of us and so would we.
Quote:
Just because we use electromagnetic radiation to communicate, it doesn't logically follow that all other civilizations do as well.
Other civilizations may have found other ways to communicate, or it may be that their atmospheric composition blocks electromagnetic radiation or degrades it to the point the signals would be unintelligible or unrecognizable to us, or they moved on to other better technology.
That's a high possibility, but then again electromagnetic radiation is also universal. Celestial bodies have already been proven to emit x-ray, infrared, UV, gamma-rays on top of the radio and visible.
Quote:
That's indicative of a total and complete lack of understanding of everything.
The intelligence community is compartmentalized. People have access to a part, but not all parts and certainly not the whole.
The people who do have access to the whole tend to be zealots and fanatics.
Their belief in what they're doing is so insanely intense, the thought of telling you would never even cross their minds.
You also have a lack of understanding of security clearances. A mere Top Secret clearance doesn't get it.
For example, your Top Secret would never trump my Top Secret ATOMAL or Top Secret CRYPTO, and I held both at different times.
So, I wouldn't tell you anything and if the circumstances were such that you had a job to do, I would tell you only the bare minimum you need to know to properly do your job, and nothing more.
I knew there were chemical weapons at Clausen. President Reagan did not know. Chancellor Helmut Kohl did not know. But, I knew.
Did President Bush know? I'd have to say it's quite likely he did. After all, Bush was a CIA agent, and rather high in the hierarchy and eventually was the CIA Director. In order for Bush to do his job as CIA Director properly, and that job was assessing threats, including terrorist threats, he would need to know.
But Reagan and Kohl didn't need to know that to do their jobs. I needed to know in order to do my job, which was playing with chemical and nuclear weapons.
I mention that, because that information was never stored electronically.
In fact, it was expressly and specifically barred from ever being stored electronically. So, try as you might, you'd never find that information on any computer anywhere in the World.
It was all on paper. Those papers were kept in a safe at the Pentagon, and only a handful of people walking this Earth had access to it (I was never one of them).
Not only that, but no one person could ever open that safe, because it required two people. There were two combination dials and no one was ever allowed to know the combination to both dials. It's usually referred to as red-key/yellow-key (even when keys are not in use). That's a safe-guard, part of the "two-person rule."
The two-person rule is in effect for any item declared vital to national security by the responsible custodian. And, it's not just any two people, it's two people of equal knowledge. I have to be able to detect if someone is performing an unauthorized procedure, like when we're talking the bomb or something like that.
Anyway, that is how the US government stores super-sensitive information, information that rises higher than being merely "vital to national security."
So, if you thought information about ETs or ET vehicles was floating freely around on US government computers for anyone and everyone to access any time they wanted to access it, you thought wrong, because that's not even remotely close to how it works.
Whatever information the US government has would certainly be super-sensitive and never exist in electronic form. It would exist solely in paper format and those papers would be kept somewhere in a safe, or probably multiple safes so that people can access the parts, but never the whole, and those safes would be both strictly limited and monitored for access.
Dream all you want, but there'll never be a Snowden. That's not going to happen, because it isn't even remotely possible to happen.
If I were to venture a guess, it's probably multiple safes, because your government does type-classify ET aircraft based on their design and theorized method of propulsion. Your government probably won't admit that, but they do, so all that information would be stored separately.
Yeah, but all of this still raises another question. Why would aliens from another planet be solely interested in the US? If the US were to hide secret info about aliens (Area 51, Roswell...) or any other place, then surely another government body would be there to expose those secrets.
What is the significance of the US to an alien species that only people with the highest level of clearance would have access to those files?
If your defense is down to this, you don't have one.
This contention, which is at the bottom of nearly every single pseudoscience belief from the 200mpg carburetor to lizard-men running the government, assumes that in X amount of years of public interest and study - in the case of UFOs, well over a hundred years with modern recording and validation equipment - not one shred of evidence has turned up that is not so highly classified that no one can even confirm its existence. Right.
There are very, very few things that are so secret and classified that even the idea of their existence is unknown. There are very few secret programs etc. that are not at least known by name and 'black box' parameters - e.g., it's an Air Force program having something to do with, say, satellite-killers. We may not know one thing past that, but such programs don't exist for decades, with hundreds of people involved, without at least the 'black box' level becoming visible.
Asserting that the government has some positive or irrefutable evidence of UFOs being alien craft, or the existence and visitation by aliens, and this information has remained completely opaque for decades, without even a valid leak that the evidence exists (regardless of what it actually is) is right up there with most new testament miracles in requiring deep faith to even consider.
And it's funny that those who claim the government can maintain this level of secrecy and control, over lifespans of involved personnel, are the ones who often scream about how generally lousy the institution is at doing its jobs.
Actually there are a number of things the govt has kept secret (successfully) for many many years.
Of ALL the classified documents they have...how many have leaked out to the public over the years?
I do realize there are certain times, when someone like Edward Snowden, or Bradley Manning will come along and reveal classified information, but the amount of top secret information they release is negligible.
Other than Snowden and Manning, can you provide a couple examples when secrets were revealed or divulged to the public (that were top secret)?
Actually there are a number of things the govt has kept secret (successfully) for many many years.
Undoubtedly. But "secret" is a highly variable term.
An Air Force department with a name and an office and a mailing address is not "secret" - no matter how little we know about what goes on inside. Even if we know their general mission, the details may be secret... but the organization isn't. (Google up NRO, for example.)
That we are developing hypersonic missiles and advanced stealth aircraft is not secret - but good luck finding out what material they're using for rivets.
That a program could be so secret there is no trace or knowledge of its existence is (to make a pun) vanishingly unlikely. A contingency plan for military strike known only to three people? Sure. A box-in-box espionage system? Sure. A... coverup and investigation of aliens or alien spacecraft involving large numbers of people, for security if nothing else? Next to impossible. They might put it in the most secure facility in North American and surround it with the Eighth Army and maintain strict box-in-box security about the details... but not the existence.
We all knew the NRO was there. We knew what it did, in general. We even knew who worked for it... but officially, it was maximum top secret and nonexistent. Do you really think anything of comparable scale could be completely hidden from public knowledge?
Using conservative estimates, the minimum result of this equation is 20. There ought to be 20 intelligent alien civilizations in the Milky Way that we can contact and who can contact us. But there aren't any.
Undoubtedly. But "secret" is a highly variable term.
An Air Force department with a name and an office and a mailing address is not "secret" - no matter how little we know about what goes on inside. Even if we know their general mission, the details may be secret... but the organization isn't. (Google up NRO, for example.)
That we are developing hypersonic missiles and advanced stealth aircraft is not secret - but good luck finding out what material they're using for rivets.
That a program could be so secret there is no trace or knowledge of its existence is (to make a pun) vanishingly unlikely. A contingency plan for military strike known only to three people? Sure. A box-in-box espionage system? Sure. A... coverup and investigation of aliens or alien spacecraft involving large numbers of people, for security if nothing else? Next to impossible. They might put it in the most secure facility in North American and surround it with the Eighth Army and maintain strict box-in-box security about the details... but not the existence.
We all knew the NRO was there. We knew what it did, in general. We even knew who worked for it... but officially, it was maximum top secret and nonexistent. Do you really think anything of comparable scale could be completely hidden from public knowledge?
So, what exactly does the NRO do? You re right, their existence was not public information up until fairly recently, but as far as what this agency does...who knows, they supposedly have state of the art surveillance satellites, that can read newspapers articles from space...but how are they any different from the CIA or NSA for that matter?
I believe there is a small group in our intelligence community that handles this kind of stuff (aliens/ UFos), and beyond them, very few people know EVERYTHING, although I do think its possible lots of people know 'tidbits', but not everything.
The easiest way to hide something like this, would be right out in the open...take a minute to look around the internet for information about 'top secret alien details' or 'Govt UFO conspiracy'...there are LOTS of these, everywhere you look, they range from the realistic to totally bizarre theories...but whose to say there is not some truth amongst the sea of nonsense and lies?
This is sort of along the lines of how the term 'conspiracy theory' got its start...lets say something secret gets leaked out...what would be the best way to counter that or make it so no one believes it? thats easy....unload SO MUCH bizarre NONSENSE,(right beside it) that it just drowns out the details of truth...that way, its literally impossible to determine truth from fabrication!
True, but I was addressing this from a human angle. Human broadcasts have only covered several dozen light years, in a galaxy that spans 100k. So the sample size itself is already quite limited, without taking into account alien teechnology.
Indeed, but we're talking about interstellar reach here. Why does a planet's geography factor into it? Any species that has not even mastered basic spaceflight would be out of the question in the first place. They would be unaware of us and so would we.
That's a high possibility, but then again electromagnetic radiation is also universal. Celestial bodies have already been proven to emit x-ray, infrared, UV, gamma-rays on top of the radio and visible.
Yeah, but all of this still raises another question. Why would aliens from another planet be solely interested in the US? If the US were to hide secret info about aliens (Area 51, Roswell...) or any other place, then surely another government body would be there to expose those secrets.
What is the significance of the US to an alien species that only people with the highest level of clearance would have access to those files?
Its not just the US, we know that Russians kept this kind of information at the highest levels of secrecy in their govt as well, its also possible some countries do not have as easy reporting as the US does for things like this, or whether the people there even pay much attention to this in the first place.
I think it has more to do with the 'aliens' themselves though, I do NOT believe they come from some other planet or far away place...I believe they originate 'closer to home', they either reside in some unknown part of our planet or some part that is inaccessible to us,(Im NOT talking about a hollow earth either...just want to make that clear), if this is the case, they very well may focus on one particular nation over others, we have no way of estimating what their motivating factors would be, surely though the fact that the US has the worlds mightiest military power, probably has something to do with their interest.
Okay. Take refuge in the last, best hope of all CT'ists: that the real truth is so secret no one will ever be able to find it out. Kind of like all other religions.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
