Are Aliens visiting us? Or are we the most advanced.

[dirty_g]

I just thought I'd ask your opinions. As many of you seem well educated. Do you think there are Aliens visiting us? In my mind there should be no doubt that with the size of the universe extra terrestrial life should indeed exist but is it capable of visiting our planet yet? Will we be the first inter solar system space faring race? Or simply put is the theory of relativity not going to be ever broken and we will never be able to travel faster than light, therefore Aliens couldnt either? SETI has picked up nothing. Then again they hardly scan everywhere. Anyway opinions please!?

[Ronald Brak]

Do you think there are Aliens visiting us?

No. I don't think so. However I do remember seeing a documentary where elephants discovered a secret camera that was recording them. I can't be certain we won't have a similar experience in the future.

Will we be the first inter solar system space faring race?

Very unlikely. So why aren't they here already, you might ask? Sorry, to bruise humanity's ego, but to an advanced civilization we might appear as exciting as earwigs. Sure some human scientists study earwigs, but what microscopic proportion of earwigs in the world get that treatment? For the most part we ignore earwigs or in rare cases spray them with poison if they happen to annoy us.

Or simply put is the theory of relativity not going to be ever broken and we will never be able to travel faster than light, therefore Aliens couldnt either?

There's no need to travel faster than light. You just need patience. If you really wanted to you could colonize the galaxy in a few million years. Maybe aliens have already colonized Jupiter? But I think it's more more likely they find the idea of actually physically colonizing a planet incredibly quaint and old fashioned. Like we find the idea of getting to the moon by being shot out of a big cannon.

SETI has picked up nothing. Then again they hardly scan everywhere. Anyway opinions please!?

Aparently it is very difficult to detect radio signals that the earth generates beyond a certain number of light years. Unless someone is making a concerted effort to beam messages on purpose we are unlikely to detected any civilizations beyond our local neigborhood, even assuming they produce radio waves in the amounts we do. I don't really see what aliens would get out of contacting primitive like us. Any messages we do get will probably tell us to convert to their religion or that eating our birth host is immoral. Rational aliens probably wouldn't bother.

While I think that life is likely to be common, I wouldn't be surprised if intelligent technologically advanced life was rare and that technologically advanced life that would be interested in us is rarer still. Since all we have to offer advanced life forms is our curiosity value, they may observe us without our knowledge, but until we find one of their hidden cameras I'll assume that they're not here just to make things a bit simpler.

[Skyfire]

This is always a subject I find interesting but many people don't seem to be able to grasp the SHEER SCALE of even our galaxy, let alone the universe.

Let's assume there is some other intelligence "out there" somewhere. We have been producing radio (and later television) signals for about 100 years now. Therefore the possible size of what I can only think to call the "detection sphere" for radio signals is at maximum 100 light years. This assumes that these signals are distinguishable from the standard background radiation by the time they have scattered this far.

In our galaxy we are about 30000 (thirty THOUSAND) light years from the centre and about 100000 (one hundred THOUSAND) light years from the far side. The galaxy is a disk shape and about (I think!) 3000 or 4000 light years thick where the Solar System is located (someone will no doubt correct me if I am wrong!).

Therefore this "detection sphere" covers an incredibly tiny fraction of the volume of the galaxy. If this other intelligence lived outside this sphere (highly likely) and their only means of detection was of radio waves, they would not (YET!) have detected us.

Alternatively, if they had some AMAZING form of optical telescope, they could possibly have seen signs of intelligence as far back as about 5000BC, with the rise of the Egyptian Empire - building of pyramids perhaps - or some other signs of civilisation.

Therefore, using optical means, the "detection sphere" is now about 7000 light years radius. However, you can still see that this still covers an INCREDIBLY SMALL volume of our galaxy.

In either case, this "other intelligent species" would have to be VERY LOCAL within our galaxy to even know we exist. After that, you move on to the other points raised, about whether they would even want to make themselves known.

My thoughts are that the most likely scenario is that even if there are other intelligences out there, it is extremely UNLIKELY that they know about us, in much the same way that we currently know of no other intelligence (SETI is still only covering a part of the sky, I believe)

[Jakenorrish]

The main point here is that there is no evidence whatsoever of aliens having visited us. For all the reasons mentioned thus far I don't think there ever will be...

[dirty_g]

It's such a shame though. Obviously though it would be nice if they were peaceful if we did meet. Still it is such a shame. So the incident of Roswell and many other sightngs are to most peoples minds easily explainable? For example Roswell really was a weather balloon? I really don't think it was a balloon. Not saying it was defiantly a UFO either though. ANyway I'm getting off track here what I'm saying is that you think that every UFO sighting that we have ever had has been either a natural phenomina, a prototype secret military jet or somebody just trying to get attention to themselves??

[Ronald Brak]

So the incident of Roswell and many other sightngs are to most peoples minds easily explainable? For example Roswell really was a weather balloon?

I've had a person tell me that his best friend came back from the dead and can heal diseases by touch. He's a nice guy, but I don't believe his crazy story because he can't produce any evidence. Same with Roswell and stuff, no one's produced any hard evidence, so I just assume that people who tell these stories are sincere like my friend, but also a bit over imaginative.

[Gillianren]

So the incident of Roswell and many other sightngs are to most peoples minds easily explainable? For example Roswell really was a weather balloon?

Yes and yes. Hey, ask Phil--it's really easy to see something in the sky you can't identify (at least at first), even if you know what you're doing. And the weight of evidence for Roswell says "weather balloon" to me. (Well, not quite weather balloon, but high-atmosphere research balloon of some kind, be it researching weather, the atmosphere itself, or the--ahem--people it just might happen to fly over.)

[MG1962A]

It's such a shame though. Obviously though it would be nice if they were peaceful if we did meet. Still it is such a shame. So the incident of Roswell and many other sightngs are to most peoples minds easily explainable? For example Roswell really was a weather balloon? I really don't think it was a balloon. Not saying it was defiantly a UFO either though. ANyway I'm getting off track here what I'm saying is that you think that every UFO sighting that we have ever had has been either a natural phenomina, a prototype secret military jet or somebody just trying to get attention to themselves?

I am going to be a little vague here. But about a year ago I watched a documentary where the deconstructed famous UFO sitings within a scientific frame works. example the Kenneth Arnold sighting of 1947 at Mount Raine. They found an identical plane went up at the exact same time of day, flew the same course etc etc.....

Anway for Roswell they got a group of people to go on a nature walk, led by a supposed ranger. They had little cameras mounted on their helmets so that they would not miss anything (cover story)

During the walk they stumble across a roped of area with a couple of armed soldiers keeping guard (again a set up)

The ranger urged them further down the track, saying...oh something must have happened, we dont want to get involved.

Over the next twelve months they interviewed the walkers several times, and asked them to describe what they saw. Each time the story was retold, more details were added. More soldiers, aggressive acts by the soliders, some sort of stranger wreckage etc etc.

The doctor who controled the experiement went on to explain that these people were suffering from layered memory. Essentially the more times an incident is retold, the mind adds little bits to reinforce the persons perception of what they thought was going on.

She said that these people were not lying, or making things up, they really believed what they were telling was the truth. She said this experiement only went for a year, but Roswell had 40 years to allow the phenomena to really play out.

Oh and for the record the investigators accidently solved Kenneth Arnolds case as well. The didn't notice at the time, but the video record of the flight picked up the reflection of Arnolds own instruments on the windscreen, doing exactly what Arnold said they did.

[Gillianren]

That would be Unsolved History on the Discovery Channel.

[Ara Pacis]

The evidence suggests that we are the most advanced civilization in the galaxy since we are the only civilization yet detected in the galaxy.

An Atlas of the Universe lists Sol's position as 26,000LY from the center of the Milky Way. The galactic disc at Sol's orbit is 2,000 LY thick.

Sol's orbit is nearly circular, keeping it out of the active arms. This is good for the biosphere. If other planets around other stars have life, it may be expected that they exist in the inter arm areas of the Galaxy in similar orbits as per the Rare Earth Hypothesis. This means that the 100LY "sphere of detection" may contain a larger fraction of the likely habitable planets and intelligent civilizations than some would assume.

[Van Rijn]

However, the amount of evidence we have been able to gather so far is limited. We can speculate on limited data, but it is not definitive.

[Van Rijn]

It's such a shame though. Obviously though it would be nice if they were peaceful if we did meet. Still it is such a shame.

In answer to your original question, as opposed to the general ETI question, no, I do not think the evidence supports alien visitations. We do have quite a bit of information about what has happened on this planet, after all, and there is no credible physical evidence in support.

As for it being a "shame" - that depends on who you talk to. Assuming there were friendly alien visitors, it still opens up several problems. One is possible cultural interference. With humans at least, low tech cultures often do very badly when faced with advanced ones. Also, it would likely mean that most of the best real estate was already taken.

[PhantomWolf]

One can only say that we are the most advanced lifeform we currently know of.

[JayUtah]

Who was it who said, "The best proof for intelligent life elsewhere in the galaxy is the fact that they don't seem to have visited Earth." Alien mothers tell their children to roll up the windows as they drive by Earth.

The same mathematics of the Drake Equation that provide for the near impossibility of our being alone in the galaxy also, unfortuantely, make it staggeringly unlikely that any two intelligent races confined to their solar systems will ever know of each other.

No, I don't believe aliens are visiting us. But I do believe there are aliens.

I don't believe we have evidence of aliens at Area 51, but I do believe the operators of Area 51 have absolutely no problem letting the belief persist that we do.

[MG1962A]

Who was it who said, "The best proof for intelligent life elsewhere in the galaxy is the fact that they don't seem to have visited Earth." Alien mothers tell their children to roll up the windows as they drive by Earth.


Oh God lol I gotta tell this story.

About 15 years ago in the Australain outback, there was a famous case of a car that was picked up, moved, then dropped by a UFO. The car was full of a family returning from a camping trip

Anyway the next day there is this cartoon in the paper. Mum dad and two kid aliens are heading home from their day out. One of the kids is leaning out the window saying "Hey dad, there is a car load of humans stuck to the bottom of our ship.

And the father replies. "Get ya head back inside the ship, everyone knows there are no such things as humans."

Rates as about the funniest space cartoon I have ever seen

[nizmo_man]

Who was it who said, "The best proof for intelligent life elsewhere in the galaxy is the fact that they don't seem to have visited Earth." Alien mothers tell their children to roll up the windows as they drive by Earth.


Oh God lol I gotta tell this story.

About 15 years ago in the Australain outback, there was a famous case of a car that was picked up, moved, then dropped by a UFO. The car was full of a family returning from a camping trip

Anyway the next day there is this cartoon in the paper. Mum dad and two kid aliens are heading home from their day out. One of the kids is leaning out the window saying "Hey dad, there is a car load of humans stuck to the bottom of our ship.

And the father replies. "Get ya head back inside the ship, everyone knows there are no such things as humans."

Rates as about the funniest space cartoon I have ever seen

hahahahaha, that's GOLD!

[trinitree88]

[QUOTE=Skyfire]This is always a subject I find interesting but many people don't seem to be able to grasp the SHEER SCALE of even our galaxy, let alone the universe.

Let's assume there is some other intelligence "out there" somewhere. We have been producing radio (and later television) signals for about 100 years now. Therefore the possible size of what I can only think to call the "detection sphere" for radio signals is at maximum 100 light years. This assumes that these signals are distinguishable from the standard background radiation by the time they have scattered this far.

Skyfire. Nitpick. There is at least some evidence that electric currents were generated about 2000 years ago. Archeological discovery of the ancient Baghdad battery poses a timeline question here. There is no way to know if individual cells were coupled whimsically to produce intermittent sparking gaps, and hence radio signals from that era. See:
http:www.world-mysteries.com/sar_11.html
Pete My link doesn't seem to work. Try Google Baghdad battery
I also recall reading of vases from that area that had been electroplated in vanadium....a metal not reduced from it's ore until the last two hundred years. Hmmm.

[Ara Pacis]

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

Any sparking would have been of such low order that it would probably not be detectable. Lightning on earth would probably drown it out.

[zenbudda]

not sure why everyone is so "anti-alien" on this thread. a good scientist will theorize and prove/disprove the theory through experimentation/analysis. just because we don't have "proof" of something doesn't not mean it doesn't exist. (maybe i've missed the true spirit of the "non-believers")

i fully accept the "likely" possibility that there is non-terran life in the universe. i also accept the possibility that i will never come to know that life (whether it be bacteria or something more sentient). i accept that it "may be" 1000's of years before we even find living single celled ogranisms.

i think that "if" there were aliens that were within a certain range of intellegence beyond our own, that it is possible that we would catch them in a slip up. however, i don't think we've been visited by such aliens.

i find it just as probable that extremely advanced alien societies know we exist and have in some form or fashion visited our planet than no other life existing in the universe. i for one whole heartedly believe there is intelligent life out there, but it's most likely too far for both us and them to contact one another.

what proof of this do i have? i have none. i don't even have the resources to prove this. i don't even have the knowlege to prove it.

[Goblin]

You might want to take a look at this thread. Its been going on for awhile.

http://www.bautforum.com/showthread.php?t=15570

I don't know if we would recognize intelligence 100 million years ahead of ours. They could be here and we could not detect them. Is there any hint that we have been or are being visited? From what I have seen the answer is yes. There is a signal hidden in the noise. No real smoking gun such as a live ET that will under go physical examination. Most of it is in the form of strange sightings some with physical evidence, some with photos some with multiple credible witnesses etc.

I just thought I'd ask your opinions. As many of you seem well educated. Do you think there are Aliens visiting us? In my mind there should be no doubt that with the size of the universe extra terrestrial life should indeed exist but is it capable of visiting our planet yet? Will we be the first inter solar system space faring race? Or simply put is the theory of relativity not going to be ever broken and we will never be able to travel faster than light, therefore Aliens couldnt either? SETI has picked up nothing. Then again they hardly scan everywhere. Anyway opinions please!?

[Blakut]

The aliens could be 700000 light years away, or/and 700000 years ago... space would not be the only 'distance' between us and them

[Kesh]

not sure why everyone is so "anti-alien" on this thread. a good scientist will theorize and prove/disprove the theory through experimentation/analysis. just because we don't have "proof" of something doesn't not mean it doesn't exist. (maybe i've missed the true spirit of the "non-believers")

I do believe you've misread the entire thread. Most folks here are simply saying there's no evidence Earth has been visited, and the likelyhood of us being contacted/detecting another civilization is very remote. Several folks have said they believe aliens likely exist, but our crossing paths is very unlikely.

[HenrikOlsen]

Or to say it another way, we're not anti-alien¹, but we're objecting to the tendency to interpret every unexplained observation as automatic confirmation that aliens are here.

1) ok, if we had Aliens, I'd be one of the first to start looking for the guns.

[Ara Pacis]

When someone proves that aliens are visiting us I'll start believing that they may be more advanced than us.

[Blakut]

I think the race that finds other races should be more evolved.

I we find the aliens, it is likely that they are not as advanced as we are.

[Maksutov]

If I were the aliens, I'd first look for those beings based on basic metabolisms similar to mine. Thus carbon-based lifeforms might be beyond the range of the scanners.

If they did detect us, they probably would have classified us as "primitive carbon-based lifeforms" which, after a few more million years, might evolve into something worthy of our interest.

[homo_cosmosicus]

I just thought I'd ask your opinions.

Okay.

Do you think there are Aliens visiting us?

Yes, they do it on regular basis, and others are just visiting occasionally,
for example, they are on expedition and Earth is one of their visiting spots,
they stay few weeks, some stay up to few months, rarely around one year.

SETI has picked up nothing.

SETI picked something, but will not release it...

[R.A.F.]

SETI picked something, but will not release it...

Do you have any evidence at all to substantiate that claim??

[N C More]

Do you have any evidence at all to substantiate that claim??

Personally, I'd like to see the evidence indicating that aliens are stopping by the Earth while on expedition. I've seen some rather odd tourists in my day...but I wouldn't go so far as to label them as ETs.

[V-GER]

Yes, they do it on regular basis, and others are just visiting occasionally,for example, they are on expedition and Earth is one of their visiting spots, they stay few weeks, some stay up to few months, rarely around one year.

You sound so certain I just have to ask:
Have you met them personally then or know people who have?