[Closed] Anyone believe in UFO's?

Maybe, you got something you want to tell us?

Cross-posted from the latest god forum,

"I have no reason to believe in UFOs, other than a healthy interest in science fiction. It's possible that an alien spaceship crashed in Area 51, but it's highly unlikely. I do actually believe that there could well life on other planets, simply because there's so damn many of them, but we're unlikely ever to make contact because of the immense distances involved."

I'd like to, but no, I'm pretty sure that if anything had developed the capability to cross the distances involved, they wouldn't be stupid enough to a) come here b) if they did let us spot them

I am certain there will be other intelligences out there somewhere. Why they would come to the earth kidnap rednecks and show things up their fundament I am much less sure

[img] [/img]

Sex tourism isn't it?

Agree with TJ 😯

It is statistically-speaking extremely unlikely that our planet has the only life in the universe. So yes, I believe in aliens.

But they are also likely to be so far away that (unless they have developed a way to travel faster than light which we believe to be impossible with our understanding of physics) we are unlikely to ever hear from them or be visited by them.

Which is a shame.

Oh there has to be intelligent life out there, unfortunately they've been using the Daily Mail website to guage that and so far thought it wasn't worth the effort.

I think it's terribly niave to believe that earth is the only planet able to sustain life, just because we haven't got the proof yet doesn't mean it's not there.

Hope they look like this:

[img] [/img]

Do you mean do I believe in extra terrestrial intelligence that just so happens to co-exist in the same point in time as us?

No. It's possible but given the amount of time involved since what we have been able to measure as the start of the universe, even given the size of the universe I don't believe that if life has evolved anywhere else that it's existence will coincide with ours. And that is even without taking in to account travel/communication.

But hey what do I know, I can quite happily accept that I am 100% wrong. I don't believe in god/gods either but I can accept that I may well be wrong.

Find it hard to believe that there aren't any aliens but the chances of them visiting us (and crashing in the process lol) seems as unlikely as finding a unicorn on Cannock Chase.

Who knows, show me the evidence.

well the reason I ask is because I crashed landed here about 60 Earth years ago and was wondering if anyone has spotted a scout craft? I know my kind have been here before as I've read the documentation in a book you call 'The Bible' my great, great grandfather landed somewhere in the Middle East and ended up chating a local virgin making out he was some angel called Micheal.

[url= http://gizmodo.com/5826491/is-this-a-ufo-on-the-bottom-of-the-ocean ]THis is definitelt a UFO and y'all should prepare to be probed.[/url]

wasn't that gabriel?

Arthur C Clarke said something like "Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case the idea is quite staggering."

Michael/Gabriel, you say tomatoe...

GrahamS - Member
Agree with TJ
So yes, I believe in aliens.

And if one of them call himself God?

[url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation ]Drake equation[/url]
[url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox ]Fermi paradox[/url]

Mysel;f I tend to follow the [url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox#Earth_is_purposely_not_contacted_.28The_zoo_hypothesis.29 ]Zoo hypothesis[/url]

To quote Douglas Adams...

[i][b]'Unfortunately I got stuck on the Earth for rather longer than I indended',
said Ford. 'I came for a week and got stuck for fifteen years.'

'But how did you get there in the first place then?'

'Easy, I got a lift with a teaser.'

'A teaser?'

'Yeah.'

'Er, what is...'

'A teaser? Teasers are usually rich kids with nothing to do. They cruise around
looking for planets which haven't made interstellar contact yet and buzz them.'

'Buzz them?' Arthur began to feel that Ford was enjoying making life difficult
for him.

'Yeah,' said Ford, 'they buzz them. They find some isolated spot with very few
people around, then land right by some poor unsuspecting soul whom no one's ever
going to believe and them strut up and down in front of him wearing silly antennae
on their head and making beep beep noises. Rather childish really.'

[/i][/b]

[img] [/img]

No. It's possible but given the amount of time involved since what we have been able to measure as the start of the universe, even given the size of the universe I don't believe that if life has evolved anywhere else that it's existence will coincide with ours. And that is even without taking in to account travel/communication.

The [url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox ]Fermi Paradox[/url].

I think that life will be discovered in the solar system within my lifetime- really simple organisms on Europa or something. And more complex stuff like us* might well be out there but I don't think we'll ever meet any unless the laws of physics have a pretty drastic re-write.

*Development wise, not Star Trek-style green humans necessarily.

I don't really believe no. However, if someone could show me a large book about them made up in the times when folk still believed the world was flat and I think you might be onto something..

See I just don't believe the statistics argument. To my mind it's a bit like the people who thought that when statistics said that the chances of an accidental nuclear war occurring was 1 in 10 billion years they all thought "oh great it's be 10 billion years before it happens".

The statistics argument is purely a numbers game. We do not know how life on earth really came about. We do seem to understand a lot of the factors that allowed for it to happen but what I have seen these factors have not been modelled mathematically and used in the calculation. My understanding is that its simply says, we ll we now life exists around 1 star so therefore if there are X stars of the same type then there must be blah blah chance of life existing around some of them.

I can't even get exited about all these planets now cropping up in the so called Cinderella zone. To me one of the things that makes life on earth possible at this time is that we have a massive moon at just the right distance that in combination with the sun at just the right distance has an effect on tides and the planets mantle that creates a dynamic planet. Obviously I'm assuming you need similar conditions elsewhere for life to arise but of the limited sampling we have (the other planets in the solar system) it would appear that this is a sound basis to work from.

I don't really believe no. However, if someone could show me a large book about them made up in the times when folk still believed the world was flat and I think you might be onto something..

ACE! 😆

lol @ the Cinderella zone fairytail mix-up

Statistics are just models that help up predict things, they of course could be wrong, but we can use them to [u]try[/u] to improve the chances of discovering if life has evolved elsewhere, the alternative is to just look randomly about the cosmos, which seems a bit silly.

mE WooNDErs iffff THis will TURN IN2 A serIOUs Topic??? 🙄

See I just don't believe the statistics argument. To my mind it's a bit like the people who thought that when statistics said that the chances of an accidental nuclear war occurring was 1 in 10 billion years they all thought "oh great it's be 10 billion years before it happens".

I LOL'd at this.

I suppose some voodoo magic created life on earth.

There are in terms of human comprehension effectively an infinite number of planets in this universe. Scientists are finding many more planets in the habitable zone than they expected, they are quite literally being discovered every week.

Once we've worked out how RNA was produced in the oceans then this question is over, it's just a matter of finding the right planet. That might not even happen though as the conditions on earth might actually have been incorrect to produce RNA, a few scientists have postulated it might have got here on an asteroid. You never ****ing now, Prometheus might be closer to home than we thought. We might be travelling to Europa to discover where life on earth originated from.

You don't need a moon for life either, bacteria can survive in places you wouldn't imagine.

If the universe is infinite then statistically, there's an exact duplicate of earth out there with an exact duplicate of STW and exactly the same arguments being waged right now.

Food for thought 🙂

It's not.... but for this discussion plus all intents and purposes it is....as the numbers fry most peoples fragile minds.

Thank god for that! (see what I did there 😉 )

It won't happen for thousands of years because we lack the aility to produce the amount of energy needed......

.....but I'll also add that I think humans will once day embark upon interstellar travel. Slower than light travel could do it because of time dilation, whilst it would take many hundreds or thousands of earth years to pull off....at a certain speed it could be achievable for those on board the craft.

Perhaps AI will play a part, think some kind "abandon earth" mission, where hundreds of ships are fired off in each direction armed with an AI that tracks for habitable planets, lands on them and then goes about producing human individuals using genetic code embedded in the space craft.

My imagination is running away with me now.

I'm not [s]delusional[/s] [i]religious[/i], but the scientist in me believes [i]statistically[/i] due to the gigantic number of 'other' planets which may be out there - there is most likely some other life form out there in the galaxy. Whether humans will ever have contact is another thing entirely. Maybe they have, but the Gov's don't want us to know...

Maybe they have, but the Gov's don't want us to know...

I used to wonder that. I ruled it out in the end because there's no way any of the other countries would've let them get away with it for so long.

I'm not [s]delusional[/s] religious,

xiphion, that belongs to me, use it by all means, but be aware that you are "being offensive" if you do.

I suspect that they are out there;

I hope to God that they never arrive. In our history it's never turned out well when the advanced culture has arrived at the shores of the primitives.

Moaris, American Indians, Incas, Aborigines not many left are there.....

It's also an Outside Context Problem (so says Iain Banks):

The usual example given to illustrate an Outside Context Problem was imagining you were a tribe on a largish, fertile island; you'd tamed the land, invented the wheel or writing or whatever, the neighbors were cooperative or enslaved but at any rate peaceful and you were busy raising temples to yourself with all the excess productive capacity you had, you were in a position of near-absolute power and control which your hallowed ancestors could hardly have dreamed of and the whole situation was just running along nicely like a canoe on wet grass... when suddenly this bristling lump of iron appears sailless and trailing steam in the bay and these guys carrying long funny-looking sticks come ashore and announce you've just been discovered, you're all subjects of the Emperor now, he's keen on presents called tax and these bright-eyed holy men would like a word with your priests.

[IMG] [/IMG]

> So yes, I believe in aliens.
And if one of them call himself God?

Then I'd be very surprised that aliens spoke English.

On earth we have perfect conditions for life to appear and evolve but its only done it once. All life on earth is related and comes from the same starting block.
If, in the billions of years its only appeared here once, why is it any more likely to appear somewhere else?
Probablility is about something not happening. Its not happened more than once.
So likelyhood may be we are the only part of the universe that knows its here.

Yeah, think we must have had some help in the past, certainly to get where we are today.

The thing you're missing is, there's an almost unimaginable number of other places where life isn't likely to appear. With such staggering odds, the impossible becomes actually quite likely.

The odds of winning the lottery are pretty much zero (1 in 14 million, IIRC). Yet, someone somewhere wins it, most weeks.

On earth we have perfect conditions for life to appear and evolve but its only done it once. All life on earth is related and comes from the same starting block.

How do you know conditions on Earth are "perfect"? They may well be sub-standard.
How do you know life has only appeared once?

It may well share one common starting block, replicating DNA, but that doesn't preclude it appearing multiple times.

If, in the billions of years its only appeared here once, why is it any more likely to appear somewhere else?

Likewise why is life any less likely on planets that share the same conditions as us?

Probability is about something not happening. Its not happened more than once.

Erm...

[img] http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRu4SZvOc4zui-HbbfA4V2kLBeDdRcUC_n3pXvTHMZL70I2GbvY [/img]

On earth we have perfect conditions for life to appear and evolve but its only done it once. All life on earth is related and comes from the same starting block.
If, in the billions of years its only appeared here once, why is it any more likely to appear somewhere else?
Probablility is about something not happening. Its not happened more than once.
So likelyhood may be we are the only part of the universe that knows its here.

What? Life here started once and it has carried on ever since. Of course it's only done it once, it hasn't been totally wiped out yet.

F*cking stoners. Lay off the pot.

Next!

What? Life here started once and it has carried on ever since. Of course it's only done it once.

How do you know it only did it once, might have started, died out and started again, or started in multiple locations at different times.

Generally I tow the line of current scientific consensus.....so what fossil records and genetic lineage tell us.

Try getting your head round those, especially the latter.

For the scientifically challenged.... http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/05/origins-of-life-on-earth/

bwaarp, I was thinking of very early on, primordial soup days..

From your link

Theobald’s study does not address how many times life may have arisen on Earth. Life could have originated many times, but the study suggests that only one of those primordial events yielded the array of organisms living today. “It doesn’t tell you where the deep ancestor was,” Penny says. “But what it does say is that there was one common ancestor among all those little beasties.”

Doesn't really matter if it arose twice in a geologically close time frame such as the primordial soup days does it? Those conditions were therefore correct for life.

Saying "life has only happened once" on this planet is totally pointless when it comes to discussing extraterrestrial life. It has no bearing on anything, I don't know why the guy even brought it up.

I think he basically argued because we haven't seen evidence of life occurring from scratch again, that it was some kind of miracle. It was just determinism. Right place, right time. Most likely there are other planets that are similar.

well maybe the conditions were right for it to arise but not thrive for long, then x years later they were right for it to arise and thrive? Anyway I agree that it has no bearing on extra terrestrial life.

For the scientifically challenged...

Some great comments on the bottom there. "Statistical analysis has confirmed human life sprang from a single organism - Adam."

More relevantly, and akin to what I was saying earlier, "There are at least 400 billion galaxies, each averaging 400 billion stars in the Universe, which could be one Universe or one among many. 'Unlikely' is meaningless on this massive scale."

OK. Evidence so far is that life has only occured once. There is absolutely no evidence (so far) that life has occured more than once.
We can only look at evidence we have.
If life exists somewhere else in the universe why hasn't it occured here in more than one form?
When discussing extraterrestrial life surely things like that should be considered. I know in fact that it is.

I need to find the journal entry for this.... http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/05/ribonucleotides/

It's getting there. 10 to 20 years and we will be able to categorically state that all genesis believers are idiots.

OK. Evidence so far is that life has only occured once. There is absolutely no evidence (so far) that life has occured more than once.
We can only look at evidence we have.
If life exists somewhere else in the universe why hasn't it occured here in more than one form?
When discussing extraterrestrial life surely things like that should be considered. I know in fact that it is.

Ummm let me see.

Changing environmental conditions, evolutionary principles and survival of the fittest.

Simply put evolution produces organisms that are best suited to it's environment. Newer and different basic life forms thus may not be as suited and would be out competed for resources.

It's the same reason why one species can evolve in a very similar fashion to a completely different species half way across the world if the environmental conditions are similar.

It's getting there. 10 to 20 years and we will be able to categorically state that all genesis believers idiots.

I said pretty much this earlier today on a different thread, it wasn't well recieved.

I said pretty much this earlier today on a different thread, it wasn't well recieved.

I can't wait. Imagine how great it will be to be Richard Dawkins on that day and be able to say "I told you so, your religious texts are a load of bollocks".

Unfortunately the holocaust denier types will still try to pick uneducated holes in it. Even if we do create life from scratch in a laboratory primordial soup.

If life exists somewhere else in the universe why hasn't it occured here in more than one form?

What do you mean by form? There are millions of forms of life on Earth from single cell organisms and bacteria to the great apes.
Do you mean specifically a DNA based "form"?

Do you mean specifically a DNA based form?

Yeah I think so, for example the reason things like PNA (peptide) haven't evolved is because the conditions simply are not there for it do so.

Of course there is UFO ... didn't you watch Aliens? 🙄

We already share this planet with species that have a significant level of intelligence, that are non-human, and in at least one instance non-mammalian, with a level of reasoning somewhere around that of a five or six year old child*. You could argue that those species are 'alien', so if 'alien' species co-exist with us, why not in a great many other places in the universe.
*And I'm not counting primates.

My favourite description, courtesy of the great Carl Sagan:

[i]"..the total number of stars in the universe is greater than all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the planet Earth."
[/i]

Think about that. That is a LOT of potential "suns" for potential "Earths"!

All life (that we know of) on earth is related.
It's all one tree of life.
You are related to everything on earth from all the apes to the smallest bit of bacteria. There's a few billion years of evolution between you and the bacteria and a few million between you and the apes but you share the same origin:
[url= ]tree of life[/url]
I don't think some of you can grasp this.
Survival of the fittest is a way for evolution to occur but its still the same life form on earth with the same origin.
It's all from one origin. We haven't found evidence of other life on earth.
Why not? is all I pose (and how much relevence does this have to finding life elsewhere?)
Extraterrestrial life should have its own origin and its own tree if it exists. The probability of it is between 0 and 100%.
If you want a valid view how about those of the head of SETI.
Paul Davies has a book called The Eerie Silence.
It even starts with what thepurist quoted earlier:
"Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case the idea is quite staggering."
Arthur C Clarke

[url= ]Tree of life in more detail[/url]

Have you all not seen K-Pax? It's as true as anything else we have on aliens.
If you have you'll know there's no need for UFOs.
So to answer the original question and not just try to inform some of you, albeit rather hurriedly.
No.
And anything that is a UFO is an alien space craft. Hey presto, identified and no longer a UFO.

The probability of it is between 0 and 100%.

It's hard to argue with compelling logic like that. 😉

You are forgetting how different the earth was then to it is now. The conditions do not exist for life to suddenly spring up any more, unless that is....it does happen. It may well.....but that aside...

Evolutionary principles can apply to abiogenesis, if chemical molecules compete with each other to bind other substances then the one that is the best at it wins. Chemicals such as those that produce RNA compete for resources as well.

Think of life like water, it finds the easiest way to the sea. So life finds the easiest route to fruition. So one environment will favour the outcome of a certain building block of life. We don't have any other naturally occurring chemicals on this planet that can function as information storage pathways because the environment doesn't lend itself to their production, but lent itself at one point to the formation of RNA and subsequently DNA.

We now have oceans teaming with life, that changed the whole environmental make up of this planet. They themselves probably stopped any new DNA based life forms arising from their own lineage because of A) They changed the environment B) They competed and used up the available resources needed to do so.

As others have said though, multiple abiogenesis may have happened. They just didn't survive and it's highly unlikely we would ever find any evidence for it.

pullfaces - Member
On earth we have perfect conditions for life to appear and evolve but its only done it once. All life on earth is related and comes from the same starting block.
If, in the billions of years its only appeared here once, why is it any more likely to appear somewhere else?
Probablility is about something not happening. Its not happened more than once.
So likelyhood may be we are the only part of the universe that knows its here.

Well, it has occurred here in all manner of ways.

Just take this little island, in the south of which you have reasonable looking, sophisticated, intelligent life forms, then at the other end - Scots, throwbacks to another dimension where they eat their young.

Not read what has been said before but why base ET life on what caused life to evolve here? ET life could be anything - entities we have never imagined, be able to comprehend or even be able to see, hear, smell or in any other way register.

[img] [/img]

Scots, throwbacks to another dimension where they eat their young.

[img] [/img]
The other, other white meat.

If you take a lot of psychedelic intoxicants, over time you will come to notice a kind of pattern of physics related molecular consciousness which would appear to indicate some kind of vibrating energy quantum particle level of reality..

which is very very [i]very[/i] big... (and calm)

there may also be other stuff out there which already understands this fully and has evolved that way.. maybe.. and they probably like techno and positivity..

maybe.. possibly.. err drugs are baaad mmmkay 😳

EDIT: and they look like that Scottish bloke in the photo above

The drugs could be the alien forms entering your weak human body..

'specially the shrooms

It's getting there. 10 to 20 years and we will be able to categorically state that all genesis believers are idiots.

Don't tell me I've bought the wrong bike

[img] [/img]

mastiles_fanylion - Member

Not read what has been said before but why base ET life on what caused life to evolve here? ET life could be anything - entities we have never imagined, be able to comprehend or even be able to see, hear, smell or in any other way register.

chemically there's only one periodic table in the universe

that's an awfully arrogant assumption from a fat and terminally earthbound bag of water such as yourself surely..?

that's an awfully arrogant assumption from a fat bag of water such as yourself surely..?

Are you two friends or is now ok for everyone to insult each other on this forum unless they are called toys19?

It wasn't a personal insult though.. we're all fat bags of water

no the elements are the only ones its not really arrogance to state that anymore than it is arrogant to say gravity works everywhere

fat bags of water have discovered some universal truths
edit: speak for yourself i am thin bag of water

It wasn't a personal insult though.. we're all fat bags of water

true, some more than others..

fat bags of water have discovered some universal truths

LOL.. are you serious..?

we can maybe explore about 1mm into the infinite yet we have discovered universal truths as a result..?

does the earthworm know universal truths about high definition televisions.?

don't be so daft.. 😆

what if we live in a can of fizzy pop..?

Didn't NASA find a non-carbon (phosphorus?) life-form in Mono Lake a while back, or was that discredited?

slainte ❓ rob

we can maybe explore about 1mm into the infinite

We can "see" about 46 billion light years into the universe. Giving us a sphere around 92 billion light years in diameter to use as a sample.

That's a pretty big "millimetre".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe