Do YOU believe in space aliens?

[Name]

Originally Posted by scaeagles

Well, of course. I wasn't meaning to sound as if you thought we were turning gravity off, but merely stating I do not think it will ever be possible to harness the type of energy necessary to overcome the gravity necessary to curve space.

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

[Name]

Aliens, sure, why not, but govt conspiracy, highly doubtful, the govt isn't that good at keeping secrets. I don't think that Einstein ever consider FTL travel, don't think it was something that he was thinking about. But theories are just those, theories, tried tested, but can never be proven to 100%(to become a law of physics such as gravity, etc) and are valid until they are proven wrong. So who knows what could become possible with future research.

[€uroMeinke]

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.

[SacTown Chronic]

Tom Cruise is still alive? WTF?

[scaeagles]

Originally Posted by €uroMeinke

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

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.

[Morrigoon]

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

[surfinmuse]

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.

[Moonliner]

Originally Posted by surfinmuse

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.

My thought is that any alien visiting earth would be the interstellar equivalent of an Anthropologist. Grad students doing field studies and the like. As such they would certainly not hover over the white house and toot their horn. They would set up blinds and study us in our natural environment perhaps snatching a few specimens from deserted country roads or on Friday nights when they’ve had a bit too much space-juice turning the robo-surgeon loose to carve their initials on some local bovine livestock. As long as we don't have anything they need (like dilithium or Ben and Jerries) we should be left in peace to eventually blow ourselves up.

[Tref]

Originally Posted by Moonliner

My thought is that any alien visiting earth would be the interstellar equivalent of an Anthropologist. Grad students doing field studies and the like. As such they would certainly not hover over the white house and toot their horn. They would set up blinds and study us in our natural environment perhaps snatching a few specimens from deserted country roads or on Friday nights when they’ve had a bit too much space-juice turning the robo-surgeon loose to carve their initials on some local bovine livestock. As long as we don't have anything they need (like dilithium or Ben and Jerries) we should be left in peace to eventually blow ourselves up.

Originally Posted by Goulish Delight

There's no supposedly about it. Time dilation (the slowing down of time for an object traveling at speed relative to an object at rest) is a central, and experimentally confirmed, component of Einstein's theory of relativity. It's what gives rise to the famed twim paradox.

It does pose some interesting issues. For example, let's assume that we satisfy ourselves with near-light speed travel. An astronaut could conceivably at those speeds reach another solar system 10 lightyears away (there are several that distance and closer). The good news: At those speeds, from the frame of reference of said astronaut, the distance will actually shrink (which is another way of expressing time dialation, I'm really still talking about the same effect), so it should take less than 10 years. The bad news...if it takes 8 years from the astronaut's perspective (16 total for the round trip), when he comes back, it will have been the full 20 years (okay, slightly longer if he's just under the speed of light).

As the distance increases, so does the gap. So there's a built in advantage and a built in disadvantage. The advantage is that the distances would be slightly more reachable than they'd appear from our perspective, allowing an astronaut to cross them in a fraction of the time that the measured distance might indicate. The disadvantage is that by the time the astronaut gets back, time on earth will have passed him by. He may have aged a couple years, while full generations have gone by at home.

Uh huh. My thoughts exactly. But here is the thing -- IT'S NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN!

[innerSpaceman]

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).