Aliens

[Pendaric]

Do you believe in them?

Have you been abducted and anally probed by one?

[Pendaric]

My own answer would be that I'm sure that aliens exist on plenty of other planets in the universe, but I'm extremely skeptical that any of them have ever got here.

[Goldie]

I think it is silly of us to think we are the only beings in the universe.
But, do i think any of us will ever know about each other? Not likely in my lifetime...or many more.

[Uthgar the Brazen]

I think there's a high probability of life, including intelligent life, being all over the universe. I don't think we've ever been visited, though. And I'd seriously question the good sense of any other species that wanted to make contact with mine.

[Goodchild]

I think there's a high probability of life, including intelligent life, being all over the universe. I don't think we've ever been visited, though.

The more thought I've given to it, the more I tend to agree with this assessment. I wouldn't be surprised to discover that the universe is fairly littered with life.

I've also come to believe that we've never been 'visited' as it strikes me that the odds are heavily in favor of an alien civilization being hostile rather than friendly. If humanity ever does manage travel to the stars I don't envisage us being the Starfleet type with a Prime Directive ... we'll be out looking for resources and damn anything that's in our way. I suspect that other civilizations would similarly be more concerned for their own well-being than another life-form's.

[Goodchild]

Have you been abducted and anally probed by one?

If it turned out that my ex-boyfriend were an alien, then my answer would be yes ;) I'm pretty certain that he's human, however.

[Pendaric]

I think there's a high probability of life, including intelligent life, being all over the universe. I don't think we've ever been visited, though. And I'd seriously question the good sense of any other species that wanted to make contact with mine.

From previous readings on this subject, the main difficulty with being visited is the distances involved. Even travelling at the speed of light, it would take ridiculous lengths of time to get between habitable planets - talking hundreds if not thousands of years. Hyper-space and Warp factor are still fictional, so unless someone does invent faster than light travel eventually then forget it.

It's a mother-in-law strategy. Live far enough away that the length of the trip makes it not worth bothering.

[Oolon Colluphid]

People who think we've been visited have no clue whatever how big space is.

I surprised myself more than my daughter when, a while ago, I tried to model the distance to the Moon. Got our ten inch diameter globe, a calculator and the encyclopedia for the figures. At the scale of the ten inch globe, the Moon was the size of a satsuma. But how far away should I place it?

Turns out: twenty-five feet away. Globe-Earth at one end of our living room, the satsuma-Moon at the other.

And that's just to the Moon. At the same scale (25 feet = 250,000 miles), the Sun would be 9,300 feet (17.6 miles) away, and as for Pluto, just forget it.

And that's just our solar system.

Proxima Centauri, the nearest star, is 4.3 light years or about 25 million million miles away -- 271,800 times as far as the Sun.

271,800 x 17.6 = ... are you ready for this...?

= 4,783,680 miles.

Yup, that's right. On the scale of my ten inch diameter globe, with its satsuma moon the other side of the living room, the nearest -- nearest! -- star* would be 4.7 million miles away. That is, about nineteen times further away than the real Moon.

* excepting the Sun, before some smartarse...

Space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the street to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space.

[LoneWolf]

Space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the street to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space.

Ol' Dougie nailed it there. I think it is entirely possible that there are millions of space faring civilizations out there and not a single one of them has ever made contact with the other.

[Ray Moscow]

My own answer would be that I'm sure that aliens exist on plenty of other planets in the universe, but I'm extremely skeptical that any of them have ever got here.

I'm not so "sure", but it does seem likely that there is life in other solar systems. It's just not likely to come here to visit.

[BWE]

There's a lot no one knows. One thing that seems reasonable is to remain skeptical until some evidence appears. I mean, I saw star wars...

[Joykins]

Aliens - may exist, but they're irrelevant. They can't get here because they're so far away. And probably most of 'em are bacteria-like. And space travel at light speeds--which would put transit time into centuries or millennia-- is probably impossible anyway, no matter how advanced they are.

IOW, what Pendaric said.

And therefore I have neither been abducted nor anally probed by one.

[DMB]

I know someone who is both a fundie Christian and an abductee by aliens. Do I get a prize?

[Uthgar the Brazen]

I know someone who is both a fundie Christian and an abductee by aliens. Do I get a prize?

Three free cases of Risperdal!

[Lisa0315]

I believe in the possibility of intelligent life. I have not been abducted or anally probed unless my ex-husband counts. hmm...Actually...

[Christina]

hmm...Actually...

That would explain a lot of things, huh?

[Lisa0315]

That would explain a lot of things, huh?

It sure would. :dunno::evil:

[ofro]

There are plenty of aliens among us, probably even on this board. Most will eventually go for citizenship.

[Goldie]

Damn! I've been discovered!

Oh, BTW, I got here via a time-wormhole bending on itself. You creatures make me laugh! What gave me away? Was it the huge sunglasses I used to hide my freakishly large eyes???

[nygreenguy]

Its almost certain that there is other life out there. There are an infinite number of possibilities. There could have been great civilizations that died out long ago. Who knows.

[Uthgar the Brazen]

Damn! I've been discovered!

Oh, BTW, I got here via a time-wormhole bending on itself. You creatures make me laugh! What gave me away? Was it the huge sunglasses I used to hide my freakishly large eyes???

The white shoes before Memorial Day. Honestly.

[Goldie]

The white shoes before Memorial Day. Honestly.

I am sorry sir...but there are just some things that even an alien wouldn't do!
The nerve!
White shoes before memorial day. I may be an alien, but I'm not a nincompoop!

[Joykins]

Damn! I've been discovered!

Oh, BTW, I got here via a time-wormhole bending on itself. You creatures make me laugh! What gave me away? Was it the huge sunglasses I used to hide my freakishly large eyes???


Thus begins the invasion of the adorably cute aliens.

[tjakey]

I suspect the cosmos is full of intelligent life, though Fermi's Paradox poses a real question. For example, an intelligent species fanning out through our galaxy at even a fraction of light speed would have run across our little solar system long before humankind ever took to walking upright.

Than again, with a good Rum & Coke buzz going, I figure that intelligent life fills the cosmos to overflowing but they have put a fence up (maybe the Oort Cloud?) to protect themselves from the bat-shit crazies that orbit that little star "over there." Face it, press the issue even a little and it becomes kind of hard to actually claim that we are "intelligent" life. Compared to a space crossing species with an evolutionary history of maybe a billion years or so, we are about as intelligent as an ant nest. Maybe the fence is that of a zoo rather than a loony bin?

[Uthgar the Brazen]

I was going to post in protest, but realised you stated ant nest. The ants themselves have us beat on a few levels, methinks.

[BioBeing]

I suspect the cosmos is full of intelligent life, though Fermi's Paradox poses a real question. For example, an intelligent species fanning out through our galaxy at even a fraction of light speed would have run across our little solar system long before humankind ever took to walking upright.

And would we know now if they had? What if they had come by 250 million years ago and just seen some dinosaurs? Maybe they had to go paint the barn and got too busy to come back recently? I mean, unless they had buzzed us in the last 50 or 60 years or so, we'd have no idea really.

Than again, with a good Rum & Coke buzz going, I figure that intelligent life fills the cosmos to overflowing but they have put a fence up (maybe the Oort Cloud?) to protect themselves from the bat-shit crazies that orbit that little star "over there." Face it, press the issue even a little and it becomes kind of hard to actually claim that we are "intelligent" life. Compared to a space crossing species with an evolutionary history of maybe a billion years or so, we are about as intelligent as an ant nest. Maybe the fence is that of a zoo rather than a loony bin?

If we are but ants, I hardly think we need a fence.

I think there are (or have been, or will be) aliens out there. But I think we are going to need a faster than light drive of some sort to find them. And I don't know if that is physically possible...

[dancer_rnb]

The universe is a dangerous place, and most surviving intelligent life is in hiding.

I've read too much scince fiction..........

[tjakey]

Maybe they do Uthgar. There is a faint glimmer of intelligence in human kind though, as evidence I offer the GSXR1000 and pretty much any sailboat. So far the ants haven't managed either one of those.

[wordy]

I dearly hope there are intelligent life out there somewhere. If not in our Galaxy at least in some of the others. It would be sad if it only existed here and we end up destroying it within some 1000 years out of our short sightedness.

I don't think they are here as the UFO folks think. But that would be really interesting if they where. Maybe that is why some have such conspiracy ideas. It is more exciting than a SciFi movie. :D

[tjakey]

If there are UFOs floating around our solar system, I dearly with they would stop by and offer me a ride, maybe give me a chance to do a bit of acro, a couple of "touch-n-goes" or maybe a high speed pass by the moon. I mean shit, why have an ass kicker of a ride and not air it out once in a while, share it with a friend?

[wordy]

Well, guys, as you know it is the Galactic Federation Code of Ethics.

Never share your tech with an inferior aggressive race.

They are waiting until we are all on the level of Buddha in Compassion. :D

Or are they just nasty stingy grumpy old men? Maybe they have had too much radiation. Lack of Empathy?

Hahahah would be cool if they all turned out to be a kind of Cylons. Automatic knowledge collectors, harvesters that didn't care about us at all. We are labrats to them.

May I ask a tech question. How high output must one have to cover the distance to the average Star?

Suppose 4 lightyears are an average distance between most stars. ok lets make it 10 lrs. How strong does a transmitter need to be to get to our Sun?

Could one make a kind of InterGalacticInternet going by sending out solar powered "probes" that roamed from star to star using solar power and them left transmitters that connected Star after Star until millions of them had access.

then as fast as one civilization started using radio then this transmitter relayed that info to all the other nodes in the net. Telling of which star and at what time it heard the transmission and the content of it. That would be cool.