Aliens Thread

[IrishLion]

Lately, I and ten other researchers worked four years to mine the government-released documents to write the "inside" government history of how we handled this mystery as a national security issue. I wrote 75% of the text. Other guys, the world's experts on the Spanish, Swedish, and Australian documents wrote much of the rest. The book is documentarily "bulletproof". ... entirely non-speculative history out-of-the-mouths of the intelligence community itself. Does it say "Alien Technology for sure"; no. But any open-minded reading of their reactions, theorizing, level-of-seriousness will convince you that they viewed the mystery as no laughing matter. As Chief of Intelligence, General Samford said in 1953: "Credible people have seen relatively incredible things."

Edit: question was answered

 

[Rhode Irish]

Don't forget that, whatever you believe the chances are that there is another planet capable of supporting ET life, you have to discount it for the chance that the species is alive and intelligent right now. The Universe is pretty old, and it take awhile for species to get intelligent, so that can be a big discount.

When you factor in time and the vastness of the universe and the limitations on the speed with which you can travel, civilizations could come into existence and disappear within the time it takes to travel from one civilization to another.
Considering the lifespan of species on earth, the chances that two civilizations intelligent enough to look for each other within the right range to find each other existing at the same time seem somewhat remote.

The most likely way for humans to connect with other life seems to be the development of technology that allows us to leave earth. Thinking in terms of space time, this is a development that has to happen relatively soon (next few thousand years) because the earth will not exist forever.

 

[NDFan4Life]

100% odds there is intelligent life somewhere else.

What do you think the odds are that there is additional intelligent life in the Milky Way?[/QUOTE]

Probably about the same odds that there's intelligent life in Washington DC.

 

[connor_in]

Wow...seriously...this hasn't been posted yet?

The Drake Equation:

The Drake equation is:

where:
N = the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which radio-communication might be possible (i.e. which are on our current past light cone);
and
R* = the average rate of star formation in our galaxy fp = the fraction of those stars that have planets ne = the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets fl = the fraction of planets that could support life that actually develop life at some point fi = the fraction of planets with life that actually go on to develop intelligent life (civilizations) fc = the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space L = the length of time for which such civilizations release detectable signals into space[8]

Drake equation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In September 1959, physicists Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison published an article in the journal Nature with the provocative title "Searching for Interstellar Communications."[2][3] Cocconi and Morrison argued that radio telescopes had become sensitive enough to pick up transmissions that might be broadcast into space by civilizations orbiting other stars. Such messages, they suggested, might be transmitted at a wavelength of 21 centimeters (1,420.4 megahertz). This is the wavelength of radio emission by neutral hydrogen, the most common element in the universe, and they reasoned that other intelligences might see this as a logical landmark in the radio spectrum.

Seven months later, radio astronomer Frank Drake became the first person to start a systematic search for intelligent signals from the cosmos. Using the 25 meter dish of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia. Drake listened in on two nearby Sun-like stars: Epsilon Eridani and Tau Ceti. In this project, that he called Project Ozma, he slowly scanned frequencies close to the 21 cm wavelength for six hours per day from April to July 1960.[3] The project was well designed, cheap, simple by today's standards, and unsuccessful.

Soon thereafter, Drake hosted a "search for extraterrestrial intelligence" meeting on detecting their radio signals. The meeting was held at the Green Bank facility in 1961. The equation that bears Drake's name arose out of his preparations for the meeting.[4]

As I planned the meeting, I realized a few day ahead of time we needed an agenda. And so I wrote down all the things you needed to know to predict how hard it's going to be to detect extraterrestrial life. And looking at them it became pretty evident that if you multiplied all these together, you got a number, N, which is the number of detectable civilizations in our galaxy. This was aimed at the radio search, and not to search for primordial or primitive life forms. —Frank Drake.

The ten attendees were conference organiser Peter Pearman, Frank Drake, Philip Morrison, businessman and radio amateur Dana Atchley, chemist Melvin Calvin, astronomer Su-Shu Huang, neuroscientist John C. Lilly, inventor Barney Oliver, astronomer Carl Sagan and radio-astronomer Otto Struve.[5] These participants dubbed themselves "The Order of the Dolphin" (because of Lilly's work on dolphin communication), and commemorated their first meeting with a plaque at the observatory hall.[6][7]

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/MlikCebQSlY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

[connor_in]

My basic belief...there is life out there. It makes more sense statistically then for there not to be. Also, technologically speaking, some should be more adavnced and some should be less advanced than us. This also does not figure in life that exists in different forms. There may be life that is based on silicon or may be virus based or some such thing. These would be nearly impossible to be compared to us. Also, you may have an insectoid or similar type of life (see Ender's Game). Again, difficult to compare. In that example, the insect like life form communicated other than oral or verbal and thus they didn't see us at intelligent as we didn't respond to their communication to us.

 

[Cackalacky]

Welcome to the NASA Exoplanet Archive

Lots of planets outside our solar system are being discovered. Very cool. I can't wait for imaging to accompany the physical data.

 

[Irish#1]

They were here, but left after listening to Milli Vanilli

 

[Irish#1]

When you factor in time and the vastness of the universe and the limitations on the speed with which you can travel, civilizations could come into existence and disappear within the time it takes to travel from one civilization to another.
Considering the lifespan of species on earth, the chances that two civilizations intelligent enough to look for each other within the right range to find each other existing at the same time seem somewhat remote.

The most likely way for humans to connect with other life seems to be the development of technology that allows us to leave earth. Thinking in terms of space time, this is a development that has to happen relatively soon (next few thousand years) because the earth will not exist forever.

I posted something similar earlier in the other thread.

If they do exists, maybe their technology or lifespan prevents them from getting here or sending a ship containing evidence of their existence? Or, maybe they aren't as intelligent as we are?

 

[Bogtrotter07]

100% odds there is intelligent life somewhere else.

What do you think the odds are that there is additional intelligent life in the Milky Way?

Additional?????? ??????

I think we need better defined criterion.

OMM just moved from over-rated poster to insider of the year, (decade?), didn't he?

Funny, what you young whippersnappers turn over when you ask questions instead of make assertions, isn't it?

 

[tussin]

Additional?????? ??????

I think we need better defined criterion.

OMM just moved from over-rated poster to insider of the year, (decade?), didn't he?

Funny, what you young whippersnappers turn over when you ask questions instead of make assertions, isn't it?

Let's call it self-aware, independent thinking organisms.

 

[goldandblue]

I'm going to rue the day that I entered this thread, but in some small way "duty calls". First a disclosure:

In the late summer of 1959, just as I was preparing to go to Notre Dame, my younger brother and I were listening to Charleston, WV radio when an off-duty employee called in to report that he was watching an unusual meandering light some distance away. We listened and then went to look. Failure. Back to listening. "The thing is making a strong turn left towards the river". We go to look again. There it is: a domed disk estimated about 200-300 away or less {I have pretty good reasons geographically for this estimate.} Silent, as usual. Rotating dome with four slits, which when turned towards you emitted four colors of light { the same four colors and sequence described by the radio.} Nice, slow, easily observable Close Encounter of the First Kind.

You of course will buy my claim or not. What the experience did was invest me with a lifetime hobby interest in the mystery of UFOs. Being a college science teacher made me a particularly "odd" choice to be so involved, and Dr, J. Allen Hynek, the USAFs scientific consultant for their Project Blue Book asked me to join him and others at his Center for UFO Studies in Chicago. This I did, becoming a board member, and editing the Journal of UFO Studies as an academic quality journal. During my now-many years of involvement, I've had the interesting experiences of talking to members of the military, the intelligence community, three interested billionaires, and the best { and worst} UFO researchers... and on the side, arguing with people like Carl Sagan.

Lately, I and ten other researchers worked four years to mine the government-released documents to write the "inside" government history of how we handled this mystery as a national security issue. I wrote 75% of the text. Other guys, the world's experts on the Spanish, Swedish, and Australian documents wrote much of the rest. The book is documentarily "bulletproof". ... entirely non-speculative history out-of-the-mouths of the intelligence community itself. Does it say "Alien Technology for sure"; no. But any open-minded reading of their reactions, theorizing, level-of-seriousness will convince you that they viewed the mystery as no laughing matter. As Chief of Intelligence, General Samford said in 1953: "Credible people have seen relatively incredible things."

I will try to {briefly} answer questions if you have any, but my out-of-control hobby has massed up WAY too much information to distribute properly on a talk site. And I'm very busy scanning my same UFO files now to preserve them for my friends around the world... old guy needs to get things ready for his passing on, and these files are among the best in the world.

 

[Irishnuke]

Going against the grain here I guess. I do not believe in aliens.

 

[connor_in]

Going against the grain here I guess. I do not believe in aliens.

To be fair tho...you don't believe in intelligent life on this planet either

 

[BGIF]

...

OMM just moved from over-rated poster to insider of the year, (decade?), didn't he?

OMM is the spawn of a an alien race of offensive linemen.

Funny, what you young whippersnappers turn over when you ask questions instead of make assertions, isn't it?

Now, if they would just respond to what was said, rather than to what they think they heard ... if they were listening in the first place.

 

[Grahambo]

OMM,

Your thoughts on the 1977 WOW! signal please.

 

[Old Man Mike]

The WOW signal... impressive that anyone even remembers it at this stage. This sent me back into my moribund Drake Equation and SETI files. I thought I'd find my references quickly, but have not; so you'll have to put up with memories et al.

Drs. John Kraus and Robert Dixon, radioastronomers, were operating the OSU [sorry Buckeye haters] radiotelescope called the "Big Ear". They were doing generic radio signal searches, not specifically aimed at SETI --- in those days finding new pulsars or other high energy sites was a good thing.

On the evening of August 15th, a graduate student, now-Dr. Jerry Ehman, was baby-sitting the telescope. When he checked on the paper recorder there was an extremely powerful "signal excursion" which looked suspiciously like just what they were looking for. He wrote on the margins of the tape, "WOW!".

This signal lasted 72 seconds, coming apparently from a specific direction in space. Kraus and Dixon were impressed. They checked and rechecked that point in space, but the signal never returned. They applied all their imagination to ways in which a false signal could explain this, but nothing came anywhere close to doing so. They were left with an enigma: something which looked just as if the Big Ear had been aligned with a powerful radio source, which, if a beam, shifted away, or if a spherically radiating source, moved on. Either way, the chance that this was technology rather than Nature remained.

Partly inspired by this, John Kraus began publishing, in 1979, a now rare journal entitled Cosmic Search. All the big hitters published there and Notre Dame's Theodore Hesburgh was on its board of editors. This is where I thought that I'd find my original reference, but didn't.

Now, just to spice this up, I'll tell you something almost no one else knows. You can decide if it relates. On that same evening, a friend of mine in Mt. Vernon. IN was operating his magnetic field detection system. He is an explorer type engineer and was just trying to see if he could ever get an excursion simultaneously with someone reporting a UFO in the vicinity. He was watching TV when noise from his system told him that the equipment was measuring a magnetic field excursion. IF the time can be nailed down exactly, it appears that the magnetic signal occurred simultaneously with Kraus' radio signal.

If these two signals are from the same source, the data would match a strong-emitting object in near-Earth orbit or closer, which then moved on.

As with all these mysteries, one cannot claim anything like certainty in one's theorizing. What one SHOULD take from them is the humility to keep a respectful silence about subject matter where one has no idea what one is talking about. There is much more to the framing data, sociology, and informed opinion surrounding this... but that is another book.

 

[IrishSteelhead]

Agree with Nuke, but:

This kind of stuff fascinates me. I'm most intrigued by the links between aliens and the Egyptians, Mayans, etc. that people talk about.

OMM, what is your take on some ancient civilizations getting "help" building their advanced societies?

 

[Grahambo]

IF the time can be nailed down exactly, it appears that the magnetic signal occurred simultaneously with Kraus' radio signal.

Did he ever try to contact the OSU lab to let them know?

 

[woolybug25]

Those of you that don't believe there is life out in the universe, can you elaborate?

Imo, I think the more logical opinion is that there has to be. Who knows if it's necessarily a society of our standards, or even intelligent, but not believing that another planet has life seems completely unrealistic to me. Scientists claime that there are at least 10,000 "goldilocks" planets that hypothetically could sustain life... Just in our solar system. There are uncountable amounts of solar systems in the universe.

Religious opinion?

 

[Whiskeyjack]

Scientists claim that there are at least 10,000 "goldilocks" planets that hypothetically could sustain life... Just in our solar system.

I assume you meant galaxy?

Religious opinion?

Based on my understanding, the discovery of extra-terrestrial life wouldn't challenge any aspect of Catholic doctrine.

 

[woolybug25]

I assume you meant galaxy?



Based on my understanding, the discovery of extra-terrestrial life wouldn't challenge any aspect of Catholic doctrine.

Yes... Galaxy. I'm drinking at the airport and typing on my phone.

I'm not saying that it necessarily challenges every doctrine. But it certainly is perceived that way by many religious followers.

 

[Grahambo]

Yes... Galaxy. I'm drinking at the airport and typing on my phone.

I'm not saying that it necessarily challenges every doctrine. But it certainly is perceived that way by many religious followers.

I'm Christian and that doesn't 'violate' anything that I'm aware of but I'm far from an expert to intelligently say one way or the other. The way I've always decided to look at my religious teachings and the Bible is that we're only told exactly what He feels that we need to be told. Anything more is either too much for us to handle or irrelevant as far as our existence is concerned. In other words, I leave open the possibilities to things such as life on other planets. Just because we don't know doesn't mean its not there.

 

[Old Man Mike]

A few notes and I'll retire for the evening:

1]. The Pope stated in the early 1950s that the discovery of intelligent life not from Earth would challenge no Catholic theological principles. As decades went on, the so-called "high" Protestant denominations [Anglicans, Episcopalians, Lutherans etc] followed suit. Middle-of-the-Road Jewish scholars have said the same, as have oriental leaders such as the Dalai Lama.

The holdouts here have been mainly the protestant right wing, with extremists like Pat Robertson saying that anyone who reports having a UFO experience "is in league with Satan, and should be taken into the street and publicly stoned to death." I wish that I was making that up but I am not.

2]. Fran did not contact the OSU lab because he knew nothing of their work at the time, and years went by until another colleague pointed out the date coincidence to him. {remember we are all amateurs on this and must do everything on our own dime and time}. By the time this was clear, the OSU observatory was closed down. I'm not sure if Professor Kraus is even still alive.

3]. Wooly: when you go through the intellectual "game" which is the Drake equation, you end up doing your best at estimating its factors and it gives you the odds on coincidentally existing advanced civilizations. All of us "romantics" [Sagan, Drake, myself] find our estimations trending towards very many currently existing "cultures". The nay-sayers call us fools and argue with the estimates of certain factors. The number of stars and goldilocks planets and even the formation of simple life are relatively non-controversial for the vast majority of discussants [I'm holding scraps of two carbonaceous chondrite meteors just now, which came from deep space, the Murchison and the Allende, and contain amino acids, nucleic acids, glycerol, etc made "somewhere else". People still hip to their biology classes will recognize the biochemical building blocks of life]. The big arguments are over whether simple life will advance and on to true technological intelligence. Nay-sayers say unlikely, but romantics rest their hopes on a strong scientific principle discovered by Ilya Prigogine, which in short states that any complex self-repairing system will inevitably increase in complexity. [there's more to it than that]. If you accept Prigogine's universal principle, then nothing is holding back the coming to be of technological cultures, except evolving on an all-water world [don't ask]. For us romantics then, the only real question is how quickly will such a species out-run its senses with its technology and destroy itself. There let each one's optimism or pessimism enter.

Old Man looking for a soft chair now. Sleep easy friends, the ETs that cruise around so cleverly now are peaceful. They could long ago kicked our butts if they weren't.

Oh, I'm sorry Steelhead: the only mysterious things that I've seen in ancient archaeology are the fitted stones at the Andean fortress of Sacsahuaman near Cuzco Peru. All standard explanations there have been ridiculous. I think that I see how we could have handled everything else that I've researched.

 

[Irish#1]

Those of you that don't believe there is life out in the universe, can you elaborate?

Imo, I think the more logical opinion is that there has to be. Who knows if it's necessarily a society of our standards, or even intelligent, but not believing that another planet has life seems completely unrealistic to me. Scientists claime that there are at least 10,000 "goldilocks" planets that hypothetically could sustain life... Just in our solar system. There are uncountable amounts of solar systems in the universe.

Religious opinion?

Extraterrestrial life could be something more along the line of insect life.

 

[Rhode Irish]

Extraterrestrial life could be something more along the line of insect life.

Or dinosaurs ... there are literally billions of possibilities. The universe is so big, it hurts to think about.

 

[woolybug25]

Extraterrestrial life could be something more along the line of insect life.

I feel like there are really two debates here.

1) Has there been or currently life of any kind on other planets (including micro organisms, bacteria, etc)
2) Is there intelligent (ie like humans) life on other planets.

Considering scientists believe some of the new planets being found seem to be viable candidates to hold water and the fact that most scientists believe Mars once held water, I see #1 as almost a definite. You don't necessarily need the physical traits of earth to create micro organisms.

 

[tko]

Going against the grain here I guess. I do not believe in aliens.

All that radiation fk'd you up, Nuke.

 

[Irishman77]

What many call aliens are demonic beings fallen angels from the pre Adamite period or the dateless past. They will be part of the upcoming deception .

 

[Irish#1]

I feel like there are really two debates here.

1) Has there been or currently life of any kind on other planets (including micro organisms, bacteria, etc)
2) Is there intelligent (ie like humans) life on other planets.

Considering scientists believe some of the new planets being found seem to be viable candidates to hold water and the fact that most scientists believe Mars once held water, I see #1 as almost a definite. You don't necessarily need the physical traits of earth to create micro organisms.

And who's to say aliens (human like) require water? Maybe their composition doesn't require them to ingest water or some liquid substance. Maybe they get all the liquid they need from their food intake?

 

[TDHeysus]

100% odds there is intelligent life somewhere else.

What do you think the odds are that there is additional intelligent life in the Milky Way?

there are approximately 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, all of which potentially have planetary systems that could harbor life......now factor in there are BILLIONS of galaxies and the number of possible planets that could contain a life form, no matter how simple it is, becomes exponentially huge - too big for humans to fully comprehend (as far as a real point of reference). The odds say, there are life forms out there, but the human race may not locate any of them for many 1000's, if not millions of years.


The thought of encountering a more advanced alien race/civilization to me is quite a scary prospect, consider if the human race encounters a civilization that is a million years (literally) more advanced then we are?

(for perspective on that last question, think what it would be like if you had to use a 486 DX4-100 computer (circa 1996) in the present day? you would think its a piece of crap and couldn't really do anything with it. Now imagine having to use (or defeat) technology that is a million years (literally) more advanced?)