awash in space aliens

JoeWras said:
First: I have been in science and engineering my whole life and have never encountered anyone professing these beliefs. Seems like something else is going on in OP's circle of acquaintances.
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Out-to-Lunch said:
Same here.
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I've never run across people that are evangelists for the idea of space aliens either. I suspect these people are agnostics or even atheists yearning to believe in a higher power, but they won't say that it's God. Safer to profess faith in a nameless alien entity.

Most people I run into have the attitude that, "since there are millions of stars and planets, there must be alien life somewhere." This is neither true nor false. It cannot be proven one way or the other.
 
Chuckanut said:
I saw a movie years ago that showed us that Venus is populated by incredibly sexy women who lust after Earthmen. I think their Queen spoke with a Hungarian accent.
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Dream on! I believe Zsa Zsa Gabor was in one such movie. And she was, of course, Hungarian.
 
"space aliens from Saturn's moon Titan".... Maybe, Maybe not. The fact is we really don't know yet. We need to land probes and eventually human explorers. If you want to know the truth then maybe support space exploration and lobby congress to allocate more funding. Personally, anybody that can look at the night sky with billions of stars and galaxies with untold planets, and then say 'it's only just us Earthlings'... is a bit delusional.
 
I believe there is other life in the universe. It may be microscopic life but life nonetheless. It's also not hard for me to believe that there is intelligent life out there defined as life that is conscious of its being (I think, therefore I am). But I have an extremely difficult time believing that we have been visited by aliens. The distances are just too vast. Sure, there could be worm holes or a fourth dimension but I don't believe so and still, the distance is just too vast and the concept of another dimension is just too far out there conceptually.
 
I’ve always said that I hope we find life somewhere other than earth before I die.
 
The lack of verifiable evidence is where the idea of visiting space aliens breaks down for me. Maybe others can handle it, but if I gave credence to all the countless notions that lack evidence, my mind would quickly become too cluttered to think clearly. Microbial life is probably fairly common, intelligent life not so much. And the distances! It's almost as if the universe wants to keep all of us separated.
 
Irishgirlyc58 said:
Dream on! I believe Zsa Zsa Gabor was in one such movie. And she was, of course, Hungarian.
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The movie was Queen of Outer Space, IIRC. Zsa Zsa and her followers help the earthmen to save the Earth. However, due to problems they end up stuck on Venus for a year with a bunch of Venusian women starved for male companionship. I hope they got overtime and hazard pay.

One thing I liked about Star Trek is that alien worlds could be much more advanced than the Federation or back in the Stone Age, and anywhere in between.
 
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Irishgirlyc58 said:
I’ve always said that I hope we find life somewhere other than earth before I die.
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That might be nice but you can't assume that they'll be friendly. Maybe they're looking for a new home and if so, we'd be in the way.
 
Jerry1 said:
I believe there is other life in the universe. It may be microscopic life but life nonetheless. It's also not hard for me to believe that there is intelligent life out there defined as life that is conscious of its being (I think, therefore I am). But I have an extremely difficult time believing that we have been visited by aliens. The distances are just too vast. Sure, there could be worm holes or a fourth dimension but I don't believe so and still, the distance is just too vast and the concept of another dimension is just too far out there conceptually.
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There is also a temporal aspect to this. The Earth had a long period of time with no life at all. Then an even longer period with only single celled life. A visitor would have to be incredibly fortunate to observe the Earth during the cosmic millisecond that coinsided with an industrial civilization.
 
Star Trek and Star Wars ruined it all. People assume and believe that we can:
  • Communicate instantly over hundreds of light years (sub space relays, ya'll!)
  • Travel well over the speed of light
It is all BS. I love it for the story, but dislike the pseudo-science that have burned out brain cells.

Our little transmissions in the last 100 years or so have only now reached a few thousand star systems (estimated at 50k to 100k), most of which are clearly inhospitable to life, unless life can take radiation that would kill us in seconds or minutes.

Is anyone listening on the few systems not baked by radiation? And if so, if they are only getting the message today, we have time to wait for the answer.

Now that's just talking to each other. Traveling is a whole different matter, and one that is likely, simply, impossible. Sorry to be a bummer.
 
I mean, considering that roughly 7% of all Americans believe that a secret cabal of Satanic, cannibalistic pedophiles operates a global child sex trafficking ring and that 2-3% of Americans believe the Earth is actually a flat disc, I certainly am not surprised that some people believe in some form of "ancient aliens" visiting the Earth in the distant past. People believe all sorts of bizarre nonsense, with zero concrete proof.
 
More aliens on earth? Dang, I thought we’d finally found our little paradise. We were just getting comfortable and settling in. Now we’re going to have to start looking again.
 
JoeWras said:
Is anyone listening on the few systems not baked by radiation? And if so, if they are only getting the message today, we have time to wait for the answer.

Now that's just talking to each other. Traveling is a whole different matter, and one that is likely, simply, impossible. Sorry to be a bummer.
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Agreed. Interstellar travel (of living beings) is very, very unlikely to be possible even for highly advanced civilizations. This is because of the enormous amounts of time required to travel between star systems that are only even a few light years away. For example, it would take a space ship traveling at 1,000,000 km/hr over 4,700 years to go just from our nearest stellar neighbor, Alpha Centauri, to Earth. And 1,000,000 km/hr is far, far faster than any spacecraft we have ever launched or have any hope of launching in the foreseeable future. People who believe in alien spacecraft (and alien beings) visiting the Earth tend to just handwave these inconvenient facts away. "Oh, they have mastered the ability to travel through wormholes" or "Oh, they have warp drives powered by unobtanium, etc. etc." They apparently have never heard of Carl Sagan's famous line: Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.
 
Sojourner said:
Agreed. Interstellar travel (of living beings) is very, very unlikely to be possible even for highly advanced civilizations. This is because of the enormous amounts of time required to travel between star systems that are only even a few light years away. For example, it would take a space ship traveling at 1,000,000 km/hr over 4,700 years to go just from our nearest stellar neighbor, Alpha Centauri, to Earth. And 1,000,000 km/hr is far, far faster than any spacecraft we have ever launched or have any hope of launching in the foreseeable future. People who believe in alien spacecraft (and alien beings) visiting the Earth tend to just handwave these inconvenient facts away. "Oh, they have mastered the ability to travel through wormholes" or "Oh, they have warp drives powered by unobtanium, etc. etc." They apparently have never heard of Carl Sagan's famous line: Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.
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Yes, that pesky speed limit (the speed of light) does get in the way of interstellar travel. ?

Colonization might still be possible with known or reasonably hypothesized future technology, though. Imagine frozen human embryos sent on spacecraft equipped with artificial wombs and A.I. spacecraft computers programmed to raise children. If a suitable environment is found, the embryos are allowed to grow and are raised to be humans, who would eventually inhabit that planet.

A lot of assumptions of future technology, to be sure, but I don’t know of any outright violations of physical laws (a la faster than light travel).

Maybe genetic engineering and creation of dna strands might allow custom made organisms to be created that would allow improved survival on not-quite-identical-to-Earth worlds.

Or, instead of biological humans, what about an A.I. “life form” created to think in a human-like manner? Maybe by that point in Earth’s history, A.I. will have supplanted biological intelligence. Maybe it is the likely fate of every world’s biological evolution. ?
 
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Sojourner said:
I mean, considering that roughly 7% of all Americans believe that a secret cabal of Satanic, cannibalistic pedophiles operates a global child sex trafficking ring and that 2-3% of Americans believe the Earth is actually a flat disc, I certainly am not surprised that some people believe in some form of "ancient aliens" visiting the Earth in the distant past. People believe all sorts of bizarre nonsense, with zero concrete proof.
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Sadly, global sex trafficking is a serious problem. Cannibalism, I'm not so sure.
 
Sojourner said:
Agreed. Interstellar travel (of living beings) is very, very unlikely to be possible even for highly advanced civilizations. This is because of the enormous amounts of time required to travel between star systems that are only even a few light years away. For example, it would take a space ship traveling at 1,000,000 km/hr over 4,700 years to go just from our nearest stellar neighbor, Alpha Centauri, to Earth. And 1,000,000 km/hr is far, far faster than any spacecraft we have ever launched or have any hope of launching in the foreseeable future. People who believe in alien spacecraft (and alien beings) visiting the Earth tend to just handwave these inconvenient facts away. "Oh, they have mastered the ability to travel through wormholes" or "Oh, they have warp drives powered by unobtanium, etc. etc." They apparently have never heard of Carl Sagan's famous line: Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.
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Well , there are other options. Ender’s Game introduced the ansible, which allow instantaneous communication across the universe. Dune gave us melange, also known as spice, which allows Space Guild navigators to cross the universe in short periods of time. In the Three Body problem Trisolarans can send siphons across the universe that affect human perception. So, the capability and potential is there even if Star Trek isn’t the answer.
 
Okay, I get it that the known (or visible) universe is a pretty big place that is many, many billions of light years across. But the hard part for me are the two sides of the argument that (1) the universe is endless or (2) it is not. Hard for me to grasp either side of the argument.
 
Car-Guy said:
Okay, I get it that the known (or visible) universe is a pretty big place that is many, many billions of light years across. But the hard part for me are the two sides of the argument that (1) the universe is endless or (2) it is not. Hard for me to grasp either side of the argument.
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That's easy. Just use those three little words that men find so hard say: "I don't know." [Quoted from the great philosopher, Red Green.]

You don't have to "believe" in things which are unknown. You don't have to argue. Maybe some day we'll know the answer. Maybe not in my lifetime. That's OK. To quote Neil deGrasse Tyson, the universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.
 
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