Aliens: Tools of the most evil Satan or just cosmic hawks who want to blow us up.
 

I have heard lots of stuff about aliens
First you have the incredulous. They say "Aliens, no ****in' way"
Than you have the conspiracy freaks. They advance all sorts of kooky theories suggesting massive government coverups and think that the men in black movies and comic books don't veer to far from the truth.
Then you have the Anal probed. You know, the people who claim to have been abducted on such respected shows as Sally and Ricki Lake.
I have even heard the theory that aliens are NOT advanced beings, merely evil spaceship clad demons who enjoy cow torture, anal probing and impregnating the innocent with Hellspawn, and gathering intellegence
And you can't forget the classic Orwellian peoople who think the war of the worlds is gonna go down any day now. Those aliens are lusting after our minerals, our tasty fleshy bodies that make the perfect jerky, and our planet which would make a great new home because those skanky space fornicators overpopulated Slarg.
Last, but certainly not the least, are your interstellar hippies. They want you to believe that aliens are so stinking perfect. It is some huge galactic Utopia out there, and all the little space cases want to do is help us out. Think about it. Could the Internet really be the product of a species that just learned to go ugg and make flint 20,000 years ago? Hell no! those great aliens brought us where we are today. Ghandi was an alien, and so was Martin Luther King Junior, and the Beatles and all peace lovers and great ones everywhere. Gretzky and many athletes were aliens. Did I mention Deacon Jones was from planet Fdashhflh? Edison and Marconi and anyone else who made something that involved electricity were super gifted alienst too. Garnax bless those saintly and altruistic beings. o what do you think about the stereotyping, do these accurately describe you or are you some other archetype. Tell me, an inquiring mind needs to know!

I believe there are aliens, and that they're peaceful, but they never helped us with our advancements. One thought is that highly advanced civilizations are peaceful, and I tend to believe that one.

Re: Aliens: Tools of the most evil Satan or just cosmic hawks who want to blow us up.
 

Tell you what?

Holy shit, Statikk, calm down! Lay off the coffee after 5 pm, and for shit's sake stop doing so much speed! Try to post something with at least a modicum of coherence for once. Why do all your new topics have to be verbal diarrheic spew that go on for eons?

Good point, Doug.


I belive aliens could exist. I don't think I fit into any of your alien-belif models.

Well, someware there bound to exist. If we live, then somewere something should exist two. But nothing has ever been here, no. In that case, they would be so exited to find life, they would tell us, or prove there visut. (They should probebly think in that direction, if there smart enough to build a transport that can take em here).

If not there must be atleast bakteria somewere. I mean, there was baketria on Mars. Two planets with lifforms in the same solarsystem... That almost prooves that there must be others someware.

Sence it all started at the same time, all life must evolve at the same speed, sence the same resorses are everyware, so I think that there are equaly evolved speacies. But there could easaly be more enhanced or disenvoled speacies depending on where thoose resorses got clogged up.

-DX

Statistically, Alien Life is almost certain to exist. I have my doubts as to whether any of it has visited Earth, though, for two reasons:

1) After calculating the probabilities, Scientists worked out that there is likely to be an average of (I think) 4 planets per Galaxy that ever produce intelligent life. That means that there are probably three others in the Milky Way. They could be at any stage of development, or they could not even have evolved life yet. The chances of them being at a suitably advanced state of development to have crossed the vast distances between there and here are not very high.

2) Why would they want to come to this shithole?

How did the rumours that Aliens visited us get started anyway? Was it the same person who said "Hey, God existed and he wrote this book...telling us how to behave!!"

Alien sighting/abduction stories began in the 50's, after an influx of films about aliens and flying saucers were shown at the cinemas.

I think it's HG Wells book on War of The Worlds which started it ultamately. There was a whole thing on that when they were telling the story over the radio, the people really did believe that there were aliens landing on earth and attacking us.

ALIENS
 

I think there are aliens out there who all live on a Odd planet called Oddworld and this is the coolest planet in the whole UNIVERSE!!!!!!!!!!!:smokin:


P.S if only there was a planet like that!!!!!!!

Well, people think that the Area 51 has Aliens in...i mean...WHAT!? Somehow i dont think so, its most likely though that the US are testing their new air craft. Nobody has actually seen an Alien...apart from Stevie Wonder, but lets not go there. I think the people who have 'seen' Aliens have merely seen a creature that resembles one or a new evolved animal. It could be a possibility. Another possibility is that the 'Aliens' are actually from a different Dimension and have the capability to break through the barriars seperating us. Im actually typing without thinking here so apologies if this sounds like mind-less drivel.

Apology accepted.

I've actually got an .mp3 of the Orson Welles radio play that scared those people. They even rang into military bases hoping to sign up and fight the invaders.

I heard there were even a few suicides after the airing of that announcement.

Speaking of suicides, how creepy was the mass suicide of that religious cult, Heaven's Gate... I remember the news, it was surreal. They killed themselves in a San Diego mansion and thought they could hitch a ride in a flying saucer riding on the tail of the halebopp commet.

The Heaven's Gate web site is still up!

Do you have the URL?

WARNING: my beliefs are wierd. i mean no-one any harm or insult, and i don't mean to scare anyone, just in case i do.

Hmmm... I kind of believe in aliens, in a way. I don't have my hopes up of meeting one in my lifetime (that is I think they could eventually come to Earth, but not now). However if any did come I imaging they would be kind and I would welcome them and tell them to leave before anyone took them into a lab for testing. Sometimes i think Jesus was an alien, and at the end when he floats into the sky he's just going back to the Mothership. Maybe he just had advanced medicine, not mericals . Other times I think that if we traveled into other galaxies, we'd find our own Earth at a different time period. Then I think maybe it doesn't matter.

At any rate, I will never believe that people who claim things are just flat-out lying. They may be mistaken, confused, hallucenating, but they did see SOMETHING. And that something should NEVER be taken lightly, or dismissed as fiction.

I truly believe that there are creatures that inspired all the old tales of Faeries, Dragons, Gnomes and Ban-Sidhes. People didn't have time to make that kind of crap up for no reason.

Jesus could have been an Alien, but also a fake.

Miracal: Walking on Water.

How: It was shallow water.

Miracal: Curing deadly illness'.

How: They were minor illness', but the Dr's those days didn't know this and so thought "Wow, Jesus has cured this man from a fatal disease!!" when it was really a common cold.

Miracal: Giving lots of bread to people aswell as fish.

How: He had hidden quantities.

Miracal: Coming back to life.

How: He never sodding died, thats how!!

Miracal: Being Gods child, with no intervention from man.

How: You can get pregnant from not having sexual intercourse.

Conclusion:
Basically Jesus was a normal guy who basically was a fraudster. Congratulations to him for pulling it off. Also, Jesus is a bastard, since i do not believe God and Mary were married.

I personally believe that their is life on other planets, in other galaxies. But I think it is rare and most likely no more advanced than earths monkeys. I think the human spirit is something that only we have, I don't believe their are any sentients anywhere out their.

So I don't believe that Earth has ever been visited by a superior race.

What does that mean?

Why do you think that? Probability predicts that there should be at least two other planets with intellgent life in the galaxy, but I'm interested to know why you believe that we are alone in that respect...

Here's a thought- Let's assume that life is, in fact, a spontaneous phenomenon that the laws of the universe state will just pop up whenever the circumstances are right- so, basically, leave a habitable planet alone long enough, life will form there out of lightning and mud, or whatever. So, life can and will exist elsewhere in the universe. Now, let's assume that life does, in fact, change gradually to become more suited to it's environment through darwinian evolution. Assuming that these two laws, both of which work entirely through the principles of randomness, hold fast in the model of the universe, it becomes INCREDIBLY unlikely that life on other planets would end up anywhere close to what we know of it. Even if you had a planet exactly like the Earth, organisms would still be entirely different. Think about it- take a billion years, and figure that every time a living thing on the planet reproduced during that time, that's another chance for evolution to pick a different path. There are possibilities beyond human notation of numbers, and since our view of sentience is so narrow (we have one species to analyze, and we don't even understand ourselves yet), it all just seems so astoundingly unlikely that we would even recognize another planet's life if we encountered it as alive, let alone thinking. It could be of a completely different chemical structure, reproduce and move through ways beyond our wildest dreams- it wouldn't have DNA, it would probably have totally different senses than us, and to assume that it would be even approximately the same size is just dumb. Things like fur, blood, irisis, and breasts, some of the most highly evolved features of earth life- it's not likely we'd find them elsewhere.
Now, with that said, let me say that I still like the idea of humanoid aliens. It's a great fictional device, and writing about them is a wonderful creative outlet. Especially when you try to justify their existance. My favorite theory I've seen in various sci-fis is that all life in the universe has a common origin, which is why it's so similar. Getting closer, but not quite. Still, though, you gotta love movie aliens.
Of course, I could be wrong. We could meet incredibly human-like aliens, and therefore have to totally re-think our theories on the formation of life and the universe. If they don't eat us, that is. It's a cookbook!

Dequibenzo, I disagree. I think life on other planets would be quite comparable to our own. Parallel evolution requires that groups of organisms develop physiology that would help them survive in their environment. Earth's life demonstrates that four limbs is an excellent way of getting around. We can also see that fins help sea-creatures travel through water, as both mammals and fish have developed them for the same purpose.

Evolution doesn't "pick paths", the environment does. Intelligent life would likely require a similar environment to earth's, so similar organisms would develop.

Meanwhile, take a look at this videoclip of a flying saucer filmed from a helicopter over New York. It's the first download at this site.

I forget who said this, maybe it was Carl Sandburg "Anything sufficiently advanced appears to be magic on the surface."
Aliens would either be at 2 stages
1:So friggin' advanced that they would make Stephen Hawkings look like he had the mind of a mental midget in comparison
or 2:They just discovered flint and eat raw meat, comparable to early civilizations.
So, they are either so wicked awesome they don't need us or are so backwards they can hardly string together a cogent series of grunts and ooga boogas

Sydney- I think you missed the point of my ranting. The big seperation between our ecology and any that might appear on other planets is origin- by accepting evolutionism and spontaneous life generation theories, we're assuming that all life on earth has one individual ancestor, so the entire time of life's existance on this planet- a mere blip in the astrological sense of things- has been spent slowly diversifying that. Of course life on earth has certain rules that apply to all creatures- the similarities were there to begin with, differences are what take time to produce. If life on another planet had a different origin, the chances of it being EXACTLY the same as ours, the only way that subsequent evolutions of it could even have a chance of resembling us, is astronomically small.
I agree with you that environments dictate evolutionary paths, but remember, we're talking about individual species here, not entire ecosystems. You're absolutely right- on a planet similar to our own, the ecosystem would be extremely similar, but there's a lot of room within those parameters for variance in the components- the individual species. Look at Madagascar. The natural environment there is almost identical to that of mainland Africa, but in just a few hundred thousand years, next to nothing on the evolutionary scale, the individual species have evolved completely differently, while still funcitioning the same way overall. Instead of having burrowing rodents, it has anteaters and in-land digging turtles, instead of using birds to spread fruit seeds, it majoritively uses Lemurs. And all these differences, even with a common origin. Yes, the ecosystem would be roughly the same on a similar planet, but there could be all sorts of crazy combinations of components to it that would still work, and without a common origin to earth it's very likely that none of them would resemble ours. To assume that life in other parts of the universe would evolve similarly to our own is like watching one game of chess and assuming that every game ever played had the same final positions for the pieces. Yes, the players will always be out for the same goal, but there are a lot of ways of accomplishing it.
Oh, and, last I checked, four limbs loses out pretty badly to six when you're looking at the majority vote on earth. Pound for pound, insects rule this rock.

Ian, that is exactly the argument I so often find myself wearily putting before others, who never understand what I'm saying...

Pardon my ignorance, but exactly why do you assume that Intelligent Life is only likely to occur on Earthlike planets? If you think about it, life doesn't even necessarily have to be Carbon-based, or use Oxygen. Even though these are the most effective elements for their purpose, there are other elements that can function similarly, and it is perfectly feasible that, on planets with a lack of those two elements (and of Nitrogen, Hydrogen, Sulphur, and Phosphorous, the other four elements essential to human life), the other elements would be used instead. If that were the case, then life would most likely be (as Ian says) different enough to be unrecognisable to us...

In fact, it is possible that planets with abundances of alternative elements may well be more common that Earth-like planets, in which case life based on those alternative elements would probably be in fact more common that Carbon-based life...

I know this is going beyond Ian's initial point. I felt he explained it thoroughly well, and I had nothing to add, so I thought I'd extend the hypothesis...

The facts are that we have nothing to compare with besides our own earth, and until we do, there's little point romanticising about incomprehensible lifeforms utilising their environment in such fanciful ways.

Anyway, why do I think intelligent life only exists on earthlike planets? I've mentioned this before in an older topic, but the moon causes the tides. The tides are what encouraged earth's diversity of life, they compete, intelligent life is born, bla, bla, bla.

If what they found on the rock from Mars indicates life, and it formed on Mars as did earth's on earth, then that's a pretty good indication that life is carbon-based, and not some cosmic mist.

1- I agree entirely. It is very difficult to make generalized statements with only one example. Which is my entire argument in counter to yours.

2- Aww, but it's so much fun!

3- Huh? I've never heard of the tides as a factor in evolution. Could you expand a little?

4- Two things-
A- Mars is EXTREMELY similar to Earth, the only difference is that it's always been a little colder, so there weren't large enough deposits of unfrozen water to transform CO2 into carbonite rocks, so the volcanoes went dormant sooner, and the atmosphere didn't build up, meaning it just kept getting colder, and bam- mars is the way it is today. If you had made a difference of even just fifteen degrees in the early days, it could've been very similar to Earth now. Same with Venus, only it was too hot in that situation. In a primordial sense, the environments on Earth and Mars were almost identical, so comparing their life (if that is in fact what we found on Mars, we still aren't certain about that) doesn't provide much in the way of contrast.
B- You gotta remember, in a cosmic sense, Mars and Earth are really REALLY close together. It is not unfeasable at all that any life that appears on one is connected to the other, again, that whole common origin thing. Many biologists believe that funguses and early spores came to earth on comets, and it's been proven that volcanic eruptions can put plant seeds into the upper ionisphere, so who knows how far they can shoot microscopic organisms? Seeds, microorganisms, and especially fungal spores can, theoretically, survive absolute zero and still grow just fine, so who knows- perhaps life came here from mars, or the other way around. Similarities in life forms here and there aren't a good sign of any universal laws to the formation and evolution of life in the universe- just in our solar system, and even then just for now.
But, like you said, we only have one real, reliable example right now of a planet that has or had life. Ours. The point is kind of moot until we make first contact or something.
Klatu barata nectu, amigos.

Dequibenzo, the moon causes the tides. Another factor accelerating evolution are the seasons, which are caused by the earth's tilt. I find it hard to comprehend how life on a planet without these factors could be advanced.

To expand, life originated in the seas. Countless times, ocean life would have been forced onto the land because of the tides, so those organisms with characteristics enabling them to survive on land would evolve to become amphibians, then life would expand outwards onto land to become mammals, etc. The seasons use the same process, only instead of water, it's different temperatures the populations have to cope with.

Without a moon like ours there's very little encouragement for life to evolve.

also, if I remember correctly the moon stabalises the earths tilt slightly so, if there wasn't a moon of the same ratio as luna there would be extreme variances in weather over time making it harder for life to exist.

Well... okay, I guess that could work. I suppose it is hard to have tidal pools without tides, but the main reason animate life came out of the oceans is that there was food on land, in the form of plants. I don't know enough about it to argue the point effectively. However, I can say that the only thing special about Earth's moon is that it's pretty large in comparison. Most moons are captured objects or formed from rings, but ours came from an impact, so it's unusually big, which does in deed make for a strong tidal influence. But the same is true for Charon and Pluto, and, more importantly, every single moon of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Especially Jupiter's Gallilean sattelites- Europa, Io, Ganymede and Callisto, three of which we think could be very good candidates for ancient or even present life to exist. Moons of jovian gas giants have quite a bit of tidal influence being exerted on them by the planets they rotate, and it's predicted that most of the planets in the galaxy are gas giants, plus there would in deed be tides on their moons if there was liquid water. Therefore, if tides are in fact important to evolution as you say, it still doesn't rule out non-earth like planets (or moons) for intelligent life.

everybody's got some pretty neat theories! I like talking about the Unknown, because no-one can ever say you're wrong and prove it! :fuzsmile:

Anyone ever wonder if there are or were or will be someday a creature that can transfer its soul into a machine and live for thousands of years? I think about that now and then.

If your soul is away from your body, does either part die? do we even have 'souls'? If we do, are they really in a seperate spiritual realm or are they just parts of physical nature we don't understand?

In a game called Aidyn Chronicles there was a supposedly advanced alien race, who ironicly had no souls. They had no art, no music, no dance. The highest medical treatment, yes; and the most efficiant agracultural system, but their only inspiration was survival. No love, no dreams, no curiosity.

lol...I think I'm getting in over my head now! I oughtta step aside and listen to you guys some more :) i feel like you know what you're talking about

That UFO video is pretty pissweak. There's no way the guy with the camera could zoom to such an obscure point so quickly and accurately. And he manages to track its position perfectly after the composite image 'flies' over to the right.

"Hey, I just noticed some obscure tiny blob thing next to one of the world's largest buildings! You think you can pick it out with your camera from your position behind me?"

It's not just earthlike planets that have moons...

As Ian said, Mars is very similar to Earth. What this evidence shows is that earthlike planets give rise to earthlike life, not that earthlike life is the only form of life, and nor that life can only occur on earthlike worlds...

As a side-note, the one crucial difference between Mars and Earth is that Mars's core contains considerably less Iron than Earth's, so Mars's magnetic field was never very strong. This was the reason that it suffered so much orbital bombardment and lost most of its atmosphere, which in turn is why it is so cold... If Mars had had a core similar to Earth's, it is more than likely that it could have ended up very earth-like indeed...

Okay, Sydney, I think I see the point you are making here. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to be saying that life requires hardships in order to develop to an advanced level. I think that this is a very good point (although I think not strong enough to be able to generalise in this way), but you are thinking too specifically. There are many ways in which life can be subjected to similar regular hardships as Tides and Seasons, and the nature of these hardships will be reflected in the life that develops.

I think you and I are looking at this from difference perspectives. You seem to be looking at what examples of life we have and seeing what they require in order to survive/evolve. That's fine, and probably the most cautious approach to take, but you have to bear in mind that life on Earth evolved the way it did because it evolved on Earth, rather than assuming that life must evolve the way it did here, which was why it evolved here...

(Meh, sorry about the poor wording there, it was difficult to get what I was thinking into words...)

I think I get what you're saying, Danno. Life on Earth does fit the circumstances that we see here almost perfectly, but it's such a close fit that on even a planet similar to Earth, the small differences would be enough to create totally different life, right?

I think my big difference with you guys is that I think there is no such thing as a "Perfect fit" for a life form to it's environment. Darwinian evolution, by nature, works off of random mutations, and when one proves beneficial, it sticks around. So, yes, life is specialized, but not customized- it does have advantages, but it isn't perfect, so there is room for difference. It's impossible to say that a completely different set of organisms couldn't still form the same ecosystem that we have now. Same machine, different parts, so to say. So, even on a planet EXACTLY like Earth, life could've evolved differently, according to my theory. Not to mention all those small but important variations real planets could have from Earth, or even major differences. Who knows?

The argument is wether or not life like ours is a standard in the universe. I'm just saying that, if there are a trillion different possibilities for a life form out there (and that's probably an underestimate), that means life like ours has a one-in-a-trillion shot, and all the other 9 billion, 9 million, 9 hundred and nintey-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine are possibilities in the "other" category. To put it another way, if we were racing horses, Sydney, even if yours is pretty fast on one kind of terrain, I still have almost a trillion other horses on my side, and just as many different tracks that are slight variations to yours to race you on, we have to race every single one of them, and you can't lose even once, because you're saying that your horse will win EVERY TIME. It's just not likely.

I agree with you totally, I was just adding another argument in parallel to yours... I was just saying that Life doesn't necessarily require an environment identical to Earth's in order to survive, so that Life could well evolve to be not only superficially different (which is what your argument is mainly geared towards pointing out) but fundamentally different...

Exactly, well put. We have both the chance for minor (in the evolutionary sense, that is. To us it's still pretty major) change in similar planets, and unpredictably enormous change in dissimilar ones. Who knows? Maybe life can even exist off of planets, in mineral rich nebulae and the even the cold of space, in which cases it would be fantastically weird. The bottom line is nobody knows anything at all about extraterrestrial life, which is what makes the search that much more enticing.
But isn't it fun to sit down with a book of human facial anatomy, tweek this and elongate that, and come up with a brand new world full of strange creatures? Aliens are truly the modern day sea-monsters and dragons. They fuel minds that are both imaginative and philisophical, which is a wonderful combination.

Amen to that.