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Funnily enough, my dad and I just had a conversation about this the other day--though he was talking about people claiming to be abducted by aliens. He was asking me if I believed in aliens. My answer was, "Do I believe there are aliens out there? Absolutely. Do I believe they have the ability to reach Earth? Questionable." He laughed and conceded the point.
The closest star to ours is 93 million miles away. Providing it could harbor life, it would still take someone centuries to travel that far.
What is it that we know about the cosmos that makes the chances good?
I'm not going to read you a bedtime story. Seriously. There is lots of good info out there if you're genuinely interested and not just being argumentative. Here is some homework:
Do we have any actual evidence of life beyond Earth? No. None. But we can't really gather the evidence, can we? That would be like the squirrels in my yard who are 100% certain there are no such things as giraffes because they can't see them. We can only analyze what is here on Earth and what we can see from Earth, and we speculate.
Life beyond Earth is sheer speculation at this point. But we know enough that we can at least make an informed speculation. And based on what we know, I have no problem believing that there is life out there beyond Earth.
Is it visiting us? I find that EXTREMELY unlikely. But not impossible.
The closest star to ours is 93 million miles away. Providing it could harbor life, it would still take someone centuries to travel that far.
The nearest star to our own sun is Proxima Centauri. It is 4.22 light years away. Even if you suppose that a craft could go half the speed of light, that would take only about 8.44 years. Not centuries. A long way? Surely. But not centuries.
The nearest star to our own sun is Proxima Centauri. It is 4.22 light years away. Even if you suppose that a craft could go half the speed of light, that would take only about 8.44 years. Not centuries. A long way? Surely. But not centuries.
That’s all well and good, and Captain Kirk might agree with you. However, we’re just a bit short of achieving such ‘speeds’. The speed of light is 670,616,629 mph, 1/2 of that would be 335,308,314 mph. Our current technological record for a manned space vehicle is 24,790 mph, which would equate to a trip to Proxima Centauri lasting 114,159 years to complete.
Even if we were able to double our technological capability each and every year starting today, it would take us thousands of years to achieve anything nearing or even half the speed of light. Since we’ve never demonstrated the ability to do that even once, it’s highly unlikely that we’d be able to do it thousands of times.
Now there is always the possibility of new discoveries in physics that might lead to new technology allowing these exponential increases in speed of manned spacecraft, but it won’t come from current propulsion technology.
But given the age of the universe, and it’s vastness, and assuming the Big Bang theory is accurate … the oldest planetary bodies would also be the furthest away from us in this expanding universe. Meaning that if living civilizations were to have developed on other planets, and their technological development followed a pattern similar to ours, those who finally achieved the speed of light capability, could very well be be hundreds of thousands of light years away, making such a voyage impossible, even at the speed of light.
So, for some space faring civilization to reach other star systems, it would require technology such as depicted in Star Trek, and even that technology has its limits, as shown in Star Trek Voyager series, where the ship and its crew were mysteriously catapulted into the “Delta Quadrantâ€, facing a 40 year journey back home at multiples of the speed of light. So even Captain Kirk could have never been able to travel from one end of our galaxy to the opposite end, even in the USS Enterprise, at maximum warp, in his lifetime. And that’s just this one galaxy, among the other 2 Trillion galaxies, which are unreachable by any theoretical means that we are aware of, presently.
On the other hand, let’s say there are some extraterrestrial civilizations out there that have indeed developed the means to travel great distances in short periods of time. If that be the case, it’s then quite conceivable there are many thousands, if not millions of other civilizations at varying states of advancement too. Even if such advanced civilizations had the capability to visit us, why would we assume them to be interested enough in us to even bother visiting, if there were thousands or millions of other choices? They would be so far advanced from our current level of advancement, what could they find interesting enough about us, a civilization of uncivilized barbarians who haven’t been able to abstain from conflict with each other for the past several thousand years?
For such advanced civilizations, Earth might just be on the “why bother†list, with countless other choices more interesting.
They had accounts of gods and spirits and ghosts and all kinds of other stories. Are those true as well?
There are many such accounts that should be considered in the context of the observers. And it’s far more likely that such stories and mythologies have some basis in reality, as opposed to being just an overactive imagination of those recounting such stories, who have painted paintings, carved images in stone, drew images in clay tablets, etc. We have modern day examples of this, such as the “Cargo Cults†of the South Pacific. Tribal groups who previously had no contact with the modern world, who saw airplanes in the sky during WW II, who witnessed supply drops parachuting down from airplanes who thought these were gifts from deities. Entire religions evolved around this, and monuments like this one were constructed, in hopes of summoning the sky deities:
That’s a pretty accurate recreation of an airplane these natives constructed. Perhaps these tribesmen had neighboring tribes people who think like you do who laughed and called them conspiracy theorists for constructing such ridiculously odd looking things LOL, but of course we know the truth about that now, don’t we? We know they were just common airplanes, but to those tribal natives, these things had never been seen before, so they were supernatural events to them.
Applying this same scenario to other events of the past, and even ancient past, which repeatedly depict very similar sightings, it’s far more likely that these ancient drawings and carvings and paintings are based on what these people actually saw, rather than just being based on the imagination of those who would otherwise have no frame of reference to dream up this kinda stuff out of thin air?
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Originally Posted by Redshadowz
There are a lot of things in the bible. Is everything true? Or only the things that fit your beliefs?
Maybe we just have different qualifications for evidence. You might look at a crop circle and see evidence of aliens. I don't. You might watch a TV show about a guy who got abducted and anal probed and jerked off by aliens and see evidence. I don't. You might see some grainy video on youtube of some geometric shape moving around in the sky and see evidence for aliens. I don't. .
Maybe it’s you who will only accept things that fit your unwavering “beliefsâ€? What you are doing here is called “projectionâ€. It’s the act of accusing others of doing precisely the thing you are actually doing!
I myself just look at it from a common sense point of view …. if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, I’m thinking there is a good chance it’s a duck.
Same is true of paintings and carvings and figurines, and stories all showing virtually the same disc shaped objects and strikingly similar looking beings with big heads and big black eyes, which show up in multiple cultures from all corners of the globe, and dated thousands of years apart. I just don’t believe it’s rational or logical to assume they are all having the same hallucinations, or dreaming up the same myths.
But again, you are entitled to believe whatever you choose to believe, no matter how rigidly close minded and illogical it may be.
Even if we were able to double our technological capability each and every year starting today, it would take us thousands of years to achieve anything nearing or even half the speed of light.... For some space faring civilization to reach other star systems, it would require technology such as depicted in Star Trek
The blackpill is that our rocket propulsion technology is pretty much the same as it was in the 1960's. The only reason we're capable of our current speeds is that we use the Earth's/Moon's gravity as a slingshot. They want to use Venus as a slingshot for the Mars mission.
If they send humans to Mars it would be a one-way mission since it would be pretty much impossible to build a rocket with enough fuel to reach Mars, slow itself upon reaching Mars, land on Mars, then relaunch from Mars, reach Earth, then decelerate(it takes as much energy to decelerate as it does to accelerate).
Moreover, I don't think people understand how dangerous space is. We're lucky they didn't die on their way to the moon. The Earth has a magnetosphere that protects us from solar/cosmic radiation. A solar flare or a cosmic ray could have killed the crew on the Apollo missions.
Imagine spending months on a tiny ship with no fresh air, millions of miles away from Earth, with more-or-less no internet or communications, and really nothing to do except look at a pretty fixed view of the stars, in what would be a tiny little prison, and where return is impossible. Sounds like hell.
Anyone who signs up for that suicide is insane.
And secondly, not only do I not think anything close to speed of light travel is possible(because it would require an infinite amount of energy), but if you could reach anywhere close to that speed there would be extreme time-dilation.
If you could travel at 50% of the speed of light, for every 1 year, 1.15 years would elapse on Earth. And if you could travel at 95% of the speed of light, for every 1 year, 3.2 years would elapse on Earth. If you were to travel Proxima Centauri at 95% of the speed of light, it would take 4.47 years. Round trip would take 8.94 years. But by the time you returned to Earth it would have been nearly 30 years.
Basically, if you could leave, you could never truly come back.
And that doesn't even consider that ramming even a tiny object(think of a bolt) at 50% of the speed of light would destroy anything we could ever build.
Here's the truth, you're never going to leave this rock. Your children are never going to leave this rock. Your grandchildren are never going to leave this rock. In fact, I have a difficult time imagining any human ever leaving our solar system. You would basically have to break the laws of physics. To distort space-time.
Or E). Intelligent life will destroy itself before it develops the ability to travel deep in space.
What are the odds that there are billions of planets with intelligent life and every single one of them destroyed themselves?
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Originally Posted by Oklazona Bound
It is fascinating how the whole universe is interconnected. It just seems that whatever factors lined up for life to exist on earth could happen elsewhere even if the odds of it happening are very low.
It is certainly possible. Probably the closest thing I could put forward as evidence for extraterrestrial life, is that the Pentagon came out and said their pilots have seen a lot of unexplained aerial phenomena which wasn't caused by the government.
Do we have any actual evidence of life beyond Earth? No. None. But we can't really gather the evidence, can we?
The presupposition is that a civilization should be communicating along some wavelength, and those transmissions should be detectable. A radio wave is basically the same thing as light, and travels at the speed of light(although there is the wave-particle duality of light, but let's ignore that for now).
What that means is, if we can see a planet, we should be able to detect radio transmissions from that planet if they are being broadcast. Our radio waves are currently propagating out into space. They've already traveled more than a hundred light years.
The absence of the existence of any radio transmissions means either...
1) Aliens aren't communicating through electromagnetic waves. They've discovered something at the quantum level that allows for signals that can travel faster than light.
2) Alien civilizations are so distant that their transmissions haven't yet reached us.
3) Alien civilizations have come into existence and broadcast signals for say, a few hundred years, but those civilizations then destroyed themselves(think nuclear war). Basically, their signals hit the Earth when it was only dinosaurs, or single-cell organisms.
4) There are no alien civilizations.
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Originally Posted by Mark S.
Life beyond Earth is sheer speculation at this point. But we know enough that we can at least make an informed speculation. And based on what we know, I have no problem believing that there is life out there beyond Earth.
That's fine. You can believe whatever you want. The thing that irritates me is when people claim that believing in aliens is more rational than not believing in aliens.
It is tantamount to claiming that it is more rational to believe in god than to not believe in god. I feel like people are trying to bully other people to believe what they believe. As I said in my first post... "I always laugh when the same atheists crying about people believing things without evidence, believe things without evidence and think people who don't are stupid."
That would be many lights years away from earth. Another universe. That might do it. That would be the same God that made this earth or universe. That's the only way I can explain. No one is immune to hearing these kinds of things. If there is another world, I think it would mimic earth and the moon.
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Seriously. There is lots of good info out there if you're genuinely interested and not just being argumentative. Here is some homework:
