You just need some spice, then some mutants can fold space so you can travel vast distances without really moving.

Aliens? Eh, I can accept that possibility - as for physics, warp speed, all that - it all presumes that our laws of physics/science apply to alien life forms. Who knows what creatures exist in other dimensions monkey boy.

But I'm a skeptic at heart, even if I liked Tom Cruise in Eyes Wide Shut and Mission Impossible.

Tom Cruise is still alive? WTF?

I believe in the likelihood of aliens. The jury's out on whether they've ever come here.

On the subject of Tom Cruise, however.... I don't believe it. I think Tom Cruise's existence is part of some government cover-up ;)

Do I think it's possible for alien life forms to exist? Sure, anything is possible. Do I believe that there actually ARE alien life forms out there? Nope.

CP said it best...

MI:1 - fun. MI:2 - sucked big time. MI:3 - I just hope they can write an MI movie in which some good guy doesn't turn into the bad guy. Gets old. Graves turned in 1, the former agent in 2.

What a great discussion, thanks for starting it, scaeagles. Thought I'd offer my $0.02...

I do believe there's other life out there, maybe super intelligent, maybe not.

My thought is that a species (or planet, etc.) advanced enough for space travel of this magnitude to visit us, won't actually bother doing so. To loosely paraphrase a line from the new War of the Worlds movie, it's like a non-relationship between us humans and maggots: they do their thing, we do ours, we don't feel compelled to learn their language and communicate with them on their level.

On the other hand, if there was a species out there that's kinda like us, then they won't have have the means to travel to us anyway, so once again: they do their thing, we do ours (yes we have SETI, and unmanned remotes, etc.... and who knows what the next lifetime will bring?).

Thanks again for the discussion, been my pleasure reading.

Today's preternatural is tomorrow's ho-hum natural. With all the ways we are discovering, even now in early mankind history of 2005, of working with laws of physics (as we presently understand them) to beat time and space and gravity and thus achieve interstellar, faster-than-light, or space-doesn't-matter travel ... I have to assume that one or more of the trillions upon trillions of civilizations in this universe or one of the many alternate universes will come up with a way of doing it.

Not that Earth is going to be a chosen visitation point for 5 societies out of all the societies in 250 billion galaxies of a hundred billion stars apiece (in this universe alone), but not only is extraterrestrial life an absolute given ... the ability to travel from one inhabited planet to another is impossible only to those with hubris to think we now know it all.

Moonliner has thoughtfully provided links to chinks in the cosmic-speed-limit armor. And here we are in only 2005. We are but children.



I don't really believe Earth has been visited by E.T.s, but there is something going on with the alien-abduction phenomena. It may not be aliens per se, and the vast majority of this stuff may be hoaxes or misunderstandings ... but there is so much of this stuff, so similarly reported through the ages, and some of it with such forceful crediblity (other than the conclusion that it must be green spacemen) that I am convinced there is something quite real behind the phenomena. (As, similarly, there is something quite real about the ghost and haunting phenomena that may or may not be actual spirits of the dead).




Oh, and I hate Tom Cruise in all but a handful of movies (which movies really surprise me, cause I frelling hate Tom Cruise).

Its not so much that I believe in the space aliens, but its that the space aliens -- stopped believing in themselves.
You can do it little guys. I got faith in ya!

Here's an interesting tidbit: Supposedly space travel DOES have an effect on time. The only reports of it I've seen have amounted to mere seconds of difference, but there is documented evidence of this phenomenon. What do you think of that and how that could affect our future ability to search for life?