Extraterrestrials

[RoN_Rancor]

Do you think extraterrestrials exist? Why or why not? What is your opinion of ufos? Of the ones that are not lies, hoaxes, or people making mistakes, do you think they are alien, military, illusions, undiscovered natural phenomenon, ghosts or other spirits, a combination of these things, or something completely different?


First of all, I think extraterrestrials do exist. The universe is just so big that it just seems impossible for there not to be someone else out there. There must be at least some other spark of life out in the deep dark universe.

Secondly, I cautiously believe that a very few ufos may be extraterrestrial in origin. "I want to believe." However, I think that a large number of the ufos that are seen and not immediately found to be mistakes or hoaxes may be natural phenomenon of some sort. As for the abductions, there may be a few that really are from extraterrestrials, but most of them are probably lies/hoaxes or take place entirely inside the person's brain. I have seen on TV that they did experiments with the effects of certain magnetic waves or radio waves or something on people completely alone and with there senses blocked. These people reported many things that were typical of an abduction. This combined with sleep paralysis* are probably the source of most non-hoax abduction reports.

*When you sleep, you are normally paralysed except for your eyes to keep you from acting out your dreams. It doesn't always work (sleep walkers). Sometimes something goes wrong and people can awake while still paralyzed. They can see, hear, and feel everything around them, but are paralysed for a short time. This is what is known as sleep paralysis (as far as I know).


EDIT: No flames or spam please.

[ January 16, 2002: Message edited by: RoN_Rancor ]

[Danny]

1. Extraterrestrials DO exist. Some scientists calculated the probability of there being stars with planets around them, then calculated the probability of one of those being earth-like, then calculated the probability of one of THOSE evolving life, then calculated the probability of one of THOSE evolving Intelligent Life. They worked out that there ought to be around 20 planets in our galaxy alone with Intelligent Life.

2. UFOs are ALL Hoaxes. Well, Hoaxes or simply mistakes. My reasoning for this is as follows: If they have the technology to get this far away from their home world [which is probably quite far, given the probability thing above], then why the hell would they want to come to a shithole like Earth...

3. You ever heard of Old Hag, Ron, just out of interest?

[ January 16, 2002: Message edited by: Rettick ]

[RoN_Rancor]

1. I read something like that too, but due to the high numbers of unknowns, many scientists still did not believe that there where any extraterrestrials. Where I read it though, I think they said it was something like an estimated 1000 intelligent civilizations in our galaxy at the present time. I'll try to find the equation and post it if I can.

2. I disagree but lol...

[ January 16, 2002: Message edited by: RoN_Rancor ]

[Joe the Intern]

I think it is highly possible for other beings to exist. Hey, if we somehow got here, why couldn't they?

[RoN_Rancor]

I found the equation. It is called the Drake Equation. The equation is this:

N = R* X Fp X Np X Fe X Fl X Fi X Fc X L
Where:

N= # of civilizations in our galaxy right now that should be able to use radio signals

R* = rate that our galaxy produces stars (in solar masses per year)

Fp = the fraction of stars with planets

Np = average planets per star

Fe = fraction of Earth-like planets (suitable for life)

Fl = fraction of Fe planets that life developes on

Fi = fraction of Fl planets which intelligent civilizations arise

Fc = fraction of Fi planets which technological civilizations arise

L = lifetime of civilization in years


Since this is a multiplication problem, if any of the variables are close to zero, then the end total will be near zero.

This info is from The Complete Idiot's Guide to Astronomy

EDIT: Old Hag? I believe so. Is that the thing where people suffering from sleep paralysis thought there was a which sitting on them and it really scared the crap outta 'em? I did say that I believe only a very, very few abductions are real. I said most are hoaxes or sleep paralysis or the thing with magnetic/radio/or something playing tricks on the person. The only ones that I believe are the ones where the person is actually reported missing and their are multiple witnesses, ect. Of those, there are probably only a few of those that are real.

[ January 16, 2002: Message edited by: RoN_Rancor ]

[Disgruntled Intern]

well i have to say that they DO exist as well.
i posted this thing in my journal that was like 5 years old, and it talks of a galaxy that was found...moons, a sun, the works..they said NOW none of the planets could sustain life, but they possibly could have at one point in time..lemme know if you'd like me to dig up the article.
also, while i agree that probably 99.9% of UFO sightings and abductions ARE hoaxes, The Roswell 'incident' just seems to be real...
i had a chance to visit the outskirts of the supposed 'area 51' site, and there were signs all over warning you about tresspassing and being shot ect..
there were guards patrolling and in watch towers...they were pretty far away, but i could see the sun glinting off of what i assumed were the scopes of their sniper rifles....moving on----
I also agree that this universe is far to large for us to be alone...as far as the 'why would aliens come to this shithole?" question..simple, perhaps they are curious and wish to gather knowledge of other races/species...i also doubt that we would ever know if and when aliens ever do make contact as it would cause a general nationwide panic.
Plus, i feel that after picking up our TV signals of i love lucy ect, they would realise what hazardous beings we are...bah i have contradicted myself too much..

[Sydney]

As Jody Foster said in Contact, it'd be an awful waste of space if there was nothing else out there.

Having said that, I think intelligent life is rare. But scientists believe simple life forms are abudant, since they have a good idea simple life forms are/were present on mars. The general consensus is if there's water, there's life. Recently they discovered that simple life forms can live both in extremely hot and cold environments, both above and below boiling and freezing points.

However, beings like us would be incredibly rare. The fact that we exist relies upon many chance happenings. The fact that we have such a large moon causes the tides in the ocean. Life arose from the seas, but the tides are what forced sea-life to adapt to land. I can't think of many scenarios that would force life to leave the sea if there were no tides. Also, earth's tilt allows for the seasons, another accellerating factor of our evolution. What's the chance that another planet has similar conditions? Even if they got that far, the dominant life-forms would probably end up as lizard-like creatures descended from amphibians. Perhaps an asteroid could wipe them out and give way to mammal-like creatures like ourselves?

I don't think we have beings coming to earth in flying saucers, abducting us.

[Disgruntled Intern]

Sydney, pardon my spamming, but Contact was quite the movie...
oh and to somewhat cancel out the spam in this post...
you have made several good points about how rare intelligent life like us there is..

[Steve]

I believe legs were first developed to escape predators. plants came on land to escape herbavores.

edit: I do believe in aliens but I don't think they'd come all this way and not show off their technological supremecy.

[ January 17, 2002: Message edited by: Steve ]

[Oddsville]

Well mabye there not trying to show off there tecnology and like Rettick said why would they wanna visit this shithole? Well probably the same reason why we would wanna visit their shithole, to find out if we are not alone and study things that we cannot yet comprehend. I do know that there is life out there, it may not be Intellegent but there is some kinda life form out there. For example, NASA now knows that there, for a fact, used to be water and from what I remember hearing breathable air on Mars, which just shows you the chances of finding life out there. If the planet nextdoor can possibly harbor life of some kind then the rest of the Universe shure as hell can.

[Danny]

Originally posted by RoN_Rancor:
Since this is a multiplication problem, if any of the variables are close to zero, then the end total will be near zero.

Well, we already know that the answer will be at least one, and that none of the factors will equal zero. There's a good chance of several other intelligent races within our Galaxy. Even getting an answer of 2, we'd still be able to predict that there is intelligent life out there...

And remember, that equation is just for our Galaxy. The Universe is a pretty huge place...

[RoN_Rancor]

I know. I'm just trying to show both sides of the argument. I completely agree that life exists elsewhere, and may even be somewhat common at least for microbes. Also, when I said close to zero, I didn't mean the variables that would have whole numbers, I mean the fractions. So if one of the fractions is something like 1/900 trillion or something, then it would be close to zero overall. Not at zero of course because we know it is at least one.

Yeah I know it is huge...

I honestly hope that sometime in my lifetime humans will make contact with, or at least find 100% undeniable proof of life somewhere in the universe. Maybe just a single radio signal pulled in by seti, or real proof if mircrobal life actually existed on mars at one time.

[Joe the Intern]

Actually, the chances of radio contact are slim. If extraterrestrials do exist, they have probably been around far longer than us, so they have advanced beyond radio. Or, They found totally different mehods. I find the former to be more likely.

And, here's a thought from your's truly. This may be totally wrong (which, it probably is), but I don't care. Suppose that life did exist on another planet. Would it mean that it would definitely have to have water, oxygen, etc? Who says all life has to work the way Earth's life does? What if, an organism developed from Odd knows what, and evolved to match its surroundings?

[RoN_Rancor]

Well, remember, radio waves can only travel at the speed of light. It is likely that if we were to interscept a radio signal that it would have been floating around for hundreds or thousands of years if not more. Whether or not a species has better equipment than radio waves, it is still likely that at some point in their history that they used them. Also, there is no reason to believe that all Extraterrestrials are more advanced than us. Of course they would be if they actually traveled to earth, but unless they do, there is no way to know how advanced they are. You are right about radio contact being slim, but this is only because of the vast amount of locations to scan, huge amount of varying frequency, and of course the unimaginable distance between stars.

Yes, it is possible that life could form under different conditions. Since we can only observe one planet, we cannot neccessarily make figure out the characteristics needed for life anywhere. We can only base it on what life here requires. It is possible that there could be extraterrestrials based on something other than carbon. (I can't remember what it was called, but there is a substance that does pretty much the same thing as carbon that could possibly be used in its place.)

[Joe the Intern]

Yay! What I said makes sense! That's a turn of events. Anyways, yes, you are right Ron. Since the stars are so far away, it would probably takes a very long time for a radio wave to travel that far.

[paramiteabe]

Here is an interesting thought. I read something how Nasa scientists believe that life might actually exists on one of the moons of Jupitor. I think it was Titan I believe. They also said that the Moon has an amostphere with a surface entirely made out of ice. Scientist predict that there might be an ocean under this ice where life can exist. And this is reacient news as well. It might not be intelligent but at least it is life you know. The universe has an infinaty amount of secrets out there and we are just starting to understand them. I do believe of the possibility of life out there. But I also believe they could never visit us because there too far. You have to remember the nature of the Universe. Enstien proved we could never travel the speed of light and come back and it being an hour later. If we were to travel across the galaxy and come back earth would of aged some billion years into the future. It would seem like seconds for us but for everyone else it would a billion years. But heres a posibility. Maybe if there is extraterestrials out there and they decided to visit us they had the teachnology to travel the speed of light. The same principle would apply for them as well there planet would of aged some millions of years. So that is probally why we are all of a sudden seeing ufo sightings. They left there worlds millions of years ago and we are finally seeing them. But it would be seconds for them and not for us. If we did the same thing it be the same.

[Steve]

also it must be considered that to travel as fast as light you must be a light particle(I think).

[abe22]

I believe there is life on other planets but I don't believe the ufo sightings because they are mostly all hoaxes. Like the holes in a farmers field you hear about them once then you never hear the same story again because investigaters find out that the farmer done it himself with a tractor. There was one sighting that COULD of been real (but I doubt it) it was in Europe (I think) and a very big ufo was seen at a airport and I heard that it took off really fast and then these people looked at the runway and they found brushings of metal (or something) on it and they said only a real object could do that. But the government probably did that to make peoples lives happy and exciting.

[Disgruntled Intern]

yeah, because the governments number one mission in life to to make UFO hoaxes, to make our lives more 'exciting and fun'.. lol!
am i the only one here who's even heard of the rosswell incident?

[Sydney]

Originally posted by Steve:
I believe legs were first developed to escape predators. plants came on land to escape herbavores.

Hmmm, I don't think so. Sea life was forced to adapt to periods of terrestrial and aquatic environments, a result of the tides.

[Silversnow]

I think that UFO:s, aliens and stuff like that actually do exist. We've had one in our garden. I have pictures of the markings on the ground, no pictures of the UFO though, but anyway... I might be overeacting or getting this all wrong but I just wanted to say something for once...

[Statikk HDM]

Basically, I'm glad that aliens haven't been found. If they did evolve they are either incredibly primative or so advanced as to be totally mindboggling. But what about colinization. Within as little as 50 years., Mars could be habitable. It seems to me that that is the perfect solution to the whole overpopulating that people seem to fear so much.

[Steve]

well if we do go to mars we can never come back and it is possible that after two years in 0g we cannot even live on mars. we can't speed the craft too far up or else they will either burn up in entry or land about 20ft into the ground either way not a pretty picture. of course people are looking into ways to be able to live on mars and theres one that I heard about involving bears. ask if you want to know.

[Sydney]

I'm interested Steve.

I also heard they've considered terraforming Mars. They will dig channels from the polar ice caps, melt the ice before introducing some genetically modified plants to make the atmosphere hospitable.

[Danny]

Apparrently, it would actually be easier to terraform Venus than Mars. They have this kind of Algae that takes in the noxious fumes of Venus's atmosphere and gives out Oxygen and Nitrogen...

[•[cyrus]•]

Venus has been said by scientists that it is a possible hot-spot for life formation.

Some have siad that Mars COULD have been a planet of living beings because they've found germs and bacteria there.


Mudokon101...

[RoN_Rancor]

They have not found bacteria on Mars. What they have found is an ancient meteor that came from mars that has structures that may be fossils of bacteria. There is reason to believe that it may be contaminated with earth bacteria.

I highly doubt that we will ever terraform mars. (I have never heard of anyone talking about terraforming venus. Wouldn't that be hard since it is hot enough to melt lead there?) I think that it would just take too much money and time, and not really be worth it. The only reason I can think of that would actually cause us to terraform Mars is if there was some major natural disaster like a meteor strike that forced us to leave earth. Otherwise, I think that though there may be a few small installations at some point for scientific research, they would never terraform mars.

[Steve]

I figure that you never know what could happen. somehow I dout that people thought that we'd be sending up pieces of metal to live in a hundred or two years ago. the bear that I mentioned is that people have studied bears and when they hibernate during winter there bones and muscles don't decay whatsoever so people are trying to find the protien that does that. that included with genetic engineering could lead to small organs that let off a protien(although it would probably be illegal and be consumed another way but that would be the most efficiant).