That was a jokey conspiracy theory for a long time and then, shock, it was all true. The scope and breadth of it was staggering. It doesn’t seem like a big deal, unfortunately, because we’re all used to Facebook and Google listening to us through our phones to sell ads.
I think the honest to god truth about UFOs is they are real, the government knows and admits they’re real, and they really have no clue what they are.
Everyone tossing around extradimensional beings as if that’s more probable than dudes from another planet is very strange to me. We know other planets exist, we can see them. We know dudes can live on planets, we live on this one. We have no proof of a multiverse other than some equations.
There’s a caveat to that. Right now cars and people exist where it makes sense for people to live. Yes vehicles rarely explore places in antartica and the middle of the desert but that’s because they are uninhabitable. Cars and people go where it’s worth exploring to.
As far as our current understanding is there are pretty precise restrictions on a planet in order to be able to actively host and sustain life (i.e. distance from the nearest star, accessible source of water, enough atmosphere to keep the water in and solar radiation out but not enough to keep too much heat in, and a lot more complicated aspects as well). As far as we can tell only a very small set of planets we’ve been able to observe from afar have conditions that could fit into that criteria.
So yes, space is big and yada yada but we live on the perfect planet for life to evolve and live on, and any advanced alien species that has the technology for interstellar travel should be able to detect that Earth fits the perfect conditions. There is no way that Earth wouldn’t have been noticed by an alien species (hell we’ve found several candidate planets ourselves and we don’t have interstellar tech).
So if aliens were exploring the universe, I don’t see why they wouldn’t be coming here to explore. This is of course with caveats that life on Earth is uncharacteristic and the components required for our notion of life is totally different than otherwise out there (though that’s not as a sure thing since we’d likely see some signs of life in our own solar system otherwise).
Which is exactly what the pro-alien people are saying.
Let’s assume it is simple. How are we looking? If a 50 meter flying saucer is surveying Titan for some reason, how would we detect that? We’re only just now getting the ability to look out into the galactic neighborhood. The things we see tend to be very large. Black holes, pulsars, other stars, big planets around those stars. We can see smaller things as they get closer. Comets, big asteroids, whatever Oumuamua was.
Ok so if aliens are buzzing our planet and observing us, why can’t we see them? Well, that’s what this thread is about. We do see them. According to that one pilot on 60 Minutes, we see them almost every day.
IDK I don’t think people would freak too much about this. I want this to be real more than anything, but in my day to day I’m more concerned with how $SPY is doing because I need to buy a house next year. UFOs being real or not real isn’t going to change my life much. Unless they come down and give us zero point energy machines or some shit and tank $TSLA. Then I’d be pissed :P
Timex
1653
Well, a few things…
- You’re assuming that aliens would have had to have evolved in a similar ecosystem to life on earth, which I don’t believe is the case.
- Aliens capable of bending the laws of physics to the degree where they can perform interstellar travel would likely be able to teraform whatever they wanted.
- the galaxy is REALLY big dude. Our galaxy alone has well over 100 billion planets. Even if a species were intelligent and capable of exploration, unless they just happened to be co-located with us to start out, there’s no reason why they’d come here… they’d go for a long while before they ran out of other planets to explore.
Consider, on earth we’ve got, what, close to 8 billion people? You have the means to go and meet every other person on earth… have you? Not even close, right? Do you even have a desire to? Could you, before you died? Now increase that number by an order of magnitude, and ask yourself, “Why didn’t one random person out there come and meet me?”
Because there was no reason for them to come and meet you.
It’s likely we’re vastly overestimating the number of complex-life habitable planets able to sustain that life for billions of years… even with rolling the dice a lot. After all we’ve conceived of very simple systems, like lotteries, where the odds are already up to the hundreds of millions.
Just some of the weirdnesses of our Solar System
- incredibly complicated orbital dynamics of multiple large planets in stable orbits.
- large outer planets sweeping orbital debris
- relatively stable star that has not apparently experienced any major traumatic ‘life threatening’ outbursts in the habital zone.
- planet with a large moon that just happens to be the exact same apparent distance as its star
- very dense rocky planet with a still liquid core of relatively small diameter after billions of years (apparently self sustaining through radioactive decay)
- being able to coalesce and generate from previous supernova enough heavy radioactive metals to make a heavy element planet
- plate tectonics being active for most of the planet’s history, able to thus produce huge numbers of varied biomes
- virtually every known element in the universe available in some small quantities on the surface, useful for creating variations in life forms
- stable weather system able to evaporate and precipipate salt water into large quantities of fresh water
- billions of years of evolution in an environment able to sustain water based life
- occasional massive extinction events that mix up the successful life types but don’t cause all life to die out
ect, ect.
The problem is that evolution needs a long time to work, apparently. Several billions of years, most of which is spent in the single cellular “stage”, working out reproduction and variance of functions and forms down there. And, actually, the universe really isn’t that old. 12 billion years isn’t… really that long, in stellar terms. We’re on generation 3 or 4 of stars? And that’s probably going to be it? It takes billions of years in a third or fourth generation star to get complicated life forms, ect? Even with billions of die rolls, you’re talking very low odds, more than likely.
Well, that’s primarily because of the predominant technology used (so far) to find exoplanets. It’s far easier to find super-earths (Neptune sized) and gas giants with the transit method than rocky planets closer to the host star. Life sprang forth on Earth as soon as it could … and it was not a very pleasant place. That suggests life is probably pretty common. Intelligent life on the other hand, yeah that’s probably a different story. But one in a few hundred billon? I don’t know.
The other thing, what if an alien civilization spotted earth a few hundred years ago? They would have found no evidence of intelligent life (radio signals, altered atmosphere, etc.) Aside from the possibility of intelligent life, there’s nothing really that would compel them to visit. We have nothing that isn’t super abundant and readily available, well, everywhere else. Our radio signals have only travelled 200 light years at this point. The galaxy is between a 100,000 and 180,000 light years across. It seems a little grandiose to declare that humans are the only intelligent life that ever evolved in the galaxy.
The Universe is 13.8 billion years old. While star formation is slowing and expansion will someday isolate all galaxies, that won’t be for a very, very long time yet. And red dwarfs will exist for … many many billons of years yet (they’ll be the last stars standing, so to speak.) While young red dwarfs are very active, older ones mellow out and that will allow life a really long time to evolve.
edit: Not suggesting we have aliens, I don’t think we do. I also don’t think humans are the only intelligent life in the galaxy. Most likely IMO FTL travel is impossible and it’d be extremely difficult for interstellar travel outside the very nearest stars - not to mention, time dilation would probably limit exploration to robotic probes.
Almost every day, not a single clear, confirmable image or video. In a world of people carrying around HD cameras. Got it. Well, I’ll just wait until they release that extraordinary evidence that can’t be anything but extraterrestrials then.
Yeah, if you can get past the pictures of flying collanders its a damn fascinating thing to think about, really. So many exoplanets out there, but what particular combination of factors do you need to get life? What about to get a technological civilization? I tend to spend the whole last week of my astro classes on the topic. You’ve got a nice list of some of the relatively unique factors that may or may not play into it there.
Outstanding. I love SMBC sometimes.
I find the math unassailable. Tim Urban’s blog post on The Fermi Paradox is an excellent read.
I mean there are so many things that have to go right. For example on earth we have huge resources of hydrocarbons that powered industrialization. Could everything on earth have developed the same, but imagine not having coal or oil/gas; can we figure out how to industrialize then? Probably not.
And the only reason we have huge hydrocarbon resources are the strange geological and biological circumstances surrounding their development and deposition - ie, scale trees without plate tectonics doesn’t get you coal. Even more than that, we don’t have coal if life evolved to decompose lignin faster than it did - scale trees are literally just piling on each other like giant dead grasses because decomposing fungi hadn’t evolved to break them down yet.
Harry Reid: “I’m not saying it’s aliens. But…”
Let me be clear: I have never intended to prove that life beyond Earth exists. But if science proves that it does, I have no problem with that. Because the more I learn, the more I realize that there’s still so much I don’t know.
I didn’t know John Glenn was into UFOs.
There’s still that enormous gap between “life exists elsewhere” which I think no one argues, and “we’re being visited by intelligent spacefaring aliens.” Just acknowledging that divide would go a long way into cleaning up these discussions.
That’s an interesting article. I’m sure someone is going to bop in here soon and point out that the authors already made up their minds, call UFO researchers “nuts,” and all that. None of which undermines the articles basic truth, though, which is far, far more logical and reasonable and evidence-based than pretty much any of the more extreme UFO theories, at least.
I definitely agree with the author that some, not all, of the UFO community is indeed vehemently hostile to actual scientific thinking, research, and epistemology. There is this almost desperate need to believe in a world where hard data, laborious experimentation, and scrupulous documentation–often requiring far more education, diligence, and skill than these UFOlogists possess–don’t really matter, but where faith and spiritual connection to the whatever are all you need. It’s actually a form of religious cult.
Warlords, dude. Warlords.
May I nitpick? My position is “life may exist elsewhere.” Supposing there are X trillion worlds in the universe that could support life, if the odds of abiogenesis occurring* on a given world are 1 in X trillion, then there might be just one world with life on it. (There might be experimental observations in the Miller/Urey tradition that could alter these odds even absent direct observation of microbes on Europa or what have you, but if there’s research that does so, I am unaware of it.)
*Of course, if you believe in an interested deity who can create life at will, then all bets are pretty much off, or so it seems to me.
RichVR
1667
Well put. I hate to think of it as a cult, that is a strong term rife with baggage. But not far from the truth.
That was an extremely interesting read, thanks for posting it. It certainly provides a seemingly credible explanation for what’s been going on of late.
Unfortunately, I think media pushback is basically a non-starter, because frankly UFO speculation is fun. I’m about as far from a believer as you can find but even I think it’s fun. So yeah, people are going to click on those articles, and media responsibility that runs contrary to revenue is a thing of the past.
Yeah, I certainly don’t want to tar the entire community with that brush, but there’s a specific and dangerous kernel at the core of all of it that is actively hostile to real science.
Oh, and as far as this “interdimensional space ghost” business,everyone would clearly be better off if they believed in the real Space Ghost.
Oh, people argue. Don’t make me start up another 400 post Fermi Paradox debate.
