So UFOs aren't a theory anymore - but we still don't know what they are

robinph

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118161439#Comment_118161439

The chances of somewhere within space and time that there is other intelligent life on another planet is essentially 1 due to the universe being so huge.

The chances of two forms of intelligent life from two different solar systems ever encountering each other is 0. The scale space and the time of the universe is so great, and the time duration that any lifeforms are likely to exist before wiping themselves out or being wiped out are so tiny that it would never happen.

Best that could be hoped for is that one lifeform detects the evidence of another inhabited system. But by the time that other inhabited system is detected, due to the distance and time involved that other life will have become extinct, and at the time when they did exist and the light of whatever we detected began it's journey to us, we would have not even reached the evolutionary point of being single cell organism on the ocean floor.

silliussoddius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118162233#Comment_118162233

But you have to admit it’s likely a life form has visited us and use lights for interstellar travel that are the same as human aircraft.

robinph

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118162909#Comment_118162909

Of course.

And they would travel all that distance just to take some samples from up the rear end of some yokels with barely a pair of brain cells to rub together before heading back across to the other side of the universe again.

celtic_oz

The chances of two forms of intelligent life from two different solar systems ever encountering each other is 0. The scale space and the time of the universe is so great, and the time duration that any lifeforms are likely to exist before wiping themselves out or being wiped out are so tiny that it would never happen.

Two contradictory sentences above, the number is non zero. Everything else is just guesses. This has all been pondered before with the drake equation and the fermi paradox.

Remember

As Arthur C Clarke said : "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"

and

J. B. S. Haldane said "My own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose."

grassmoon

UFOs have always been real. If someone sees a flying object that they can't identity, it's a UFO. Doesn't necessarily mean it's aliens. There's many more plausible explanations. Common things are common.

robinph

For the purposes of talking to conspiracy theorists and alien abduction "victims" it's probably simplest to just stick with zero as they would take anything else as definitive proof. :)

celtic_oz

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118163166#Comment_118163166

Well as long as you remain as open minded as Avril Haines the current Director of US National Intelligence who said two days ago ( 33 min 18 secs in ), even if she finds it hard to mouth the words "extra terrestrially."

https://youtu.be/UWyPk_f8aAA?t=1998

which hasn't moved on much from Maj. Gen. John A. Samford's Statement on "Flying Saucers" in the 50's

https://youtu.be/4-MbGYAv7Cg?t=40

Dohnjoe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118161439#Comment_118161439

Not what I wrote at all. Have a read of my post again.

MonkieSocks

..

celtic_oz

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118176399#Comment_118176399

what a lazy, disrespectful and arrogant picture.

UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record Paperback – August 2, 2011

UFOs & Nukes: Extraordinary Encounters at Nuclear Weapons

Gordon Cooper an American aerospace engineer, test pilot, United States Air Force pilot, and the youngest of the seven original astronauts in Project Mercury, the first human space program of the United States.

https://youtu.be/WjglS7Y7pFA?t=136

 Fighter pilot Commander David Fravor of the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group

https://youtu.be/VqdOXfuzDIw?t=18

Dohnjoe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118191342#Comment_118191342

Yet, incredibly, with all the camera tech we have everywhere now, these types of incidents are never clearly captured on film.

Likewise now that everyone essentially has a HD video camera in our back pockets, accounts of "UFO abductions" have essentially disappeared.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118162233#Comment_118162233

Do we have any evidence of an intelligent life form ever wiping itself out ? I dont think so.

Dohnjoe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118193226#Comment_118193226

We have come to the brink of global nuclear war several times, now we're busy ignoring climate change, so yeah, we're pretty good candidates so far.

I am a space enthusiast, but indeed the chances of two intelligent civilizations encountering each other in the vastness of the universe and the gulf of time is astronomically slim.

silliussoddius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118193281#Comment_118193281

And even more slim is that this evidence will be presented to us by modern UFOLOGY

robinph

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118193226#Comment_118193226

Nope. Although we've shown the capability and idiocy to do it to ourselves several times.

But the scale of time involved, of which life on this planet has only been around for a minute fraction of, and the chances of humanity surviving for the hundreds of millions of years from now to give even the tiniest chance of us encountering another similarly long surviving species that also somehow manages to find a way around dealing with the vast distances involved in order to travel between livable systems make the chances so close to zero its barely worth wasting the time to write out all the zeros you'd need after the decimal point.

There is almost certainly other intelligent life out there in the universe, good chance there is in our galaxy, slight chance that we become capable of detecting their presence such as from identifying oxygen or water or whatever it is that those who know about such things figure would be proof of life. Whatever we detect though will be from looking back through time and at distances that would be impossible for us to reach or even communicate with unless there is some major shift in how physics works.

celtic_oz

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118192922#Comment_118192922

sorry how exactly do you know this ? Because YOU have never seen them ?

Luis Elizondo is a former U.S. Army Counterintelligence Special Agent and former employee of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2b4qSoMnKE

His comments on high resolution photos

https://youtu.be/wULw64ZL1Bg?t=2931

"I am a space enthusiast, but indeed the chances of two intelligent civilizations encountering each other in the vastness of the universe and the gulf of time is astronomically slim."

Pure conjecture, you continue to assume that any intelligent civilizations are roughly the same intelligence as we are.

There could be billions of civilizations with technology a billion YEARS ahead of us ( we were on horses 2000 years ago ), with scanning technology that would appear to be MAGIC to us.

We could be the equivalent of ants in an ant hill discussing the non-existence of planes.

silliussoddius

It must be horrible having been part of the Bigelow pay back, sorry UFO task force, and seeing evidence of the biggest story in human history and not being able to sneak out a photo.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118193871#Comment_118193871

You are using our current knowledge base as a benchmark for your point and you can only get us so far when there is so much unknown. You say yourself we have only been around for a fraction of a minute, so what do we really know? Time is relative, distance is relative.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118193281#Comment_118193281

So what you are saying is there is no evidence of intelligent life ever wiping itself out. The whole bases of the argument made on a post that you liked, making the posters whole point of 2 intelligent life forms not meeting due the universe size, and the fact that lifeforms are likely to wipe themselves out or being wiped Null and void.

celtic_oz

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118194147#Comment_118194147

please describe the characteristics of a photograph of a UFO that would not be judged to be a fake.

silliussoddius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118194270#Comment_118194270

I’m talking about him being restrained by his job from releasing the biggest news in human history. He is also part of the movement that gave us a batman balloon for a UFO, triangle bokeh for a supposed flying pyramid and then there’s the skinwalker ranch brigade and their nonsense.

King Mob

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118194235#Comment_118194235

What evidence do you have that lifeforms don't wipe themselves out?

We know from our history that intelligent life absolutely can wipe itself out pretty easily.

And if it can, and there are other examples of intelligence out there, some must have wiped themselves out for whatever reason.

What percentage do, that's not something we can know. But we have to accept that this is a factor in the chances of two intelligent lifeforms meeting.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118194173#Comment_118194173

If time and distance is relative in the way you're vaguely suggesting, why would aliens need to physically come to Earth in spaceships?

Why couldn't they just use their hyper advanced technology to observe everything they need to from afar?

Also why would the spaceships have to keep their lights on all the time? And why would they be detectable by radar etc?

robinph

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118194173#Comment_118194173

If time and distance are irrelevant then we are either alone in the universe, or the other lifeforms consider us not intelligent life/ actually stick to the Star Trek prime directive 100% of the time.

Dohnjoe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118194033#Comment_118194033

There's no single piece of strong compelling evidence, that's the problem. I certainly haven't come across any. Every video I see turns out to be a new test missile, or a drone, or a weather artefact, or instrument glitch, etc. For the rest, it's just blurry enough to be inconclusive. If someone can provide I am more than willing to have a look.

Dohnjoe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118194235#Comment_118194235

Let's say there are no "wormholes" and interstellar travel is only possible via normal physics, the best a civilisation could probably do is get a drone to their closest neighbour star. Possibly life on a one-way trip. That's the hard limitations of space (and I'm using a craft accelerating up to almost light speed in that example). We can watch sci-fi and imagine all sorts of stuff, but the physics are really, really, really hard to bend.

Even if there are thousands, or millions of planets with intelligent life out there, space is so astronomically big, and time so incredibly expansive, the chances of two of them meeting is still infinitesimally small

celtic_oz

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118195521#Comment_118195521

There is no single piece of HD footage that you would believe unless corroborated by a thousand "real" news sources without saying its CGI

Even when confronted by the US Navy saying "we dont know what these are" and releasing 2 videos with a verifiable chain of custody.. its "sorry its too fuzzy"

As per the OP no one knows what these are, ultimately we have to be open minded enough to leave the door open for extraterrestrial however slim the possibility.

Shutting that door based on known physics is incredibly lazy, cowardly and historically usually wrong.

King Mob

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118200137#Comment_118200137

But no one is shutting the door on that discussion using that argument.

It's a bit dishonest to keep attributing to people who aren't making that argument. Especially when you aren't actually addressing the points they are actually making, no?

If you are keeping an open mind, and known physics shouldn't hold back possibilities, are you also open to it idea of other explanations for these events?

For example, some people believe that UFO sightings are actually fairies or Angels and Demons. Do you believe these are valid possibilities? If not, why not?

Personally I don't think they are valid explanations, but if you are insisting that all possibilities must be considered and that physics and reality as we know it can be ignored, we must consider them equally as valid as extraterrestrials.

Dohnjoe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118200137#Comment_118200137

That's fine. We have had thousands upon thousands of cases, none have been clear cut. With all our technology that's pushing the envelope of probability.

There are many highly convincing tales of abductions and encounters, even by professionals, even by groups of people, but now that we all have smartphones these have all but disappeared. We have an amazing capacity to misidentify stuff, especially in the sky, and even more so in space (a recent article, which I can't find back right now, demonstrated how differently stuff moves in space, and how it would often fool even seasoned astronauts into thinking they were seeing something else)

I'm not ruling anything out, but just pointing out the obvious (and removing wishful thinking)

celtic_oz

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118200204#Comment_118200204

read the posts .. people saying there a ZERO percent chance etc, then posting pictures that show how to identify all lights.

With regards to ETs using faster than light travel, self replicating bots to scan galaxies for life and potentially cloaking technology etc is beyond our current knowledge of physics, how you can compare that with uncle Fred who died last week twitching your tea cup over an ouija board is your decision.

King Mob

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118214654#Comment_118214654

But that's not what people are saying. You're misrepresenting their arguments for some reason.

Please quote where someone has say "ZERO percent chance".

And yes, comparing your claims about aliens with other supernatural claims is valid and relevant.

How do you know that Uncle Fred is not using physics as yet undiscovered?

Why are you allowed to appeal to unknown and unknowable science to support your beliefs, but the same cannot be applied to other beliefs?

What's the difference other than you believe one thing but not the other?

There's no need to get offended at the comparison and claiming that the difference is obvious will not really answer the question I'm asking.

Also you bring up cloaking technology, which brings up a point I raise that was ignored.

If you are saying that aliens can do anything including defy the laws of physics as we know them AND that cloaking devices are something they have...

Why are we seeing them? Why are they detectable by radar? Why do they need to come into the atmosphere? Why do they need to travel to Earth at all?