UFO's. What Do You Think?

[Lorizael]

Originally posted by Vesayen
Evolution is not a purpose and is more of an abstract natural process then what we usually think of. Salt crystalizing is a natural process. Evolution is not really a "process" in the same way. I still think it is likley that most sentient life in the universe has evolved to be self perpetuating, though of course this could be wrong but from a human perspective it seems likley.

Evolution is the resultant system of a complex structure that is... all the ogranisms of a species and their offspring over a period of time.

Evolution - natural selection and mutation and genetics - is the means by which the sum total of a species over a period of time continues its existence.

All things seek self-perpetuation. If you look at the universe in metaphors, there are many things that can be called one thing. The lifespan of an entire species, for example, can be thought of as one thing. And as a singular thing, it seeks its own survival.

But the metaphorical singular objects in the universe - life, ideas, Gaia theory stuff - might produce things on their own that have meaning outside of self-perpetuation, and the production of those certain things might become better over time; it might evolve.

Uh. Er. I saw a UFO once. Yeah.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


Why? Don't you want to be abducted and have sex with hot alien babes?

Captain Kirk

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Vesayen
It won't? How come people built bomb shelters to survive what they thought would be a nuclear war wiping out most of the planet?

Because they where scared ****less and someone saw a way of marketing something to take advantage of it. If a nuclear war destroyed most of the planet, what the **** is a bomb shelter going to do about? Great, you can live out your life completely alone in a tomb, eating canned vegtebles and spam .

How much we have extensive rescources devoted to the survival of our high ranking goverment officials in a worst case scenario?

Politicians taking advantage of their position so that they don't have to face the consequences of their actions is hardly an argument for the feasability of space colonization.

Obviously if the home planet is destroyed and the populace are dead, it won't matter to THEM, however it may matter to their still alive cousins on some other world.

It is impossible to create a colony that would be completely independant of the home planet without the use of sci-fi technology. And if we are to assume that this hypthetical alien race has such technology at their disposal, than it's just as well to assume that the same technology will allow them to prevent any sort of catastrophe from happening, anyways. It happens in the movies, doesn't it?

Ludd, all species try to perpetuate themselves. There is not a compelling reason to think this would be otherwise.

Not really. Supposedly, most species aren't even conscious so they can't acutaly "try" to do anything. Many would say that humans are the only conscious species, yet we're also the most self-destructive. You where just talking about nuclear holocaust - where does that fit into "perpetuating the species"?

"Delay the inevitable"? What the hell does that mean?

It means that expansion and growth doesn't guarantee survival. Often it does quite the opposite. Look at our current situation - we have a population that is exploding, and consumption that is sky rocketing. But we live, like everything else in this universe, in a limited environment. When something grows exponentially it inevtiably collapses. Expanding and colonizing will at best buy you a few extra minutes, and make the eventual catastrophe that much more catastrophic.

Oh noes! Entropy will kill us all with the heat death of the universe so manking should stop eating tommorow because we are all doomed....

There isn't a remote possiblity that mankind will last that long.

Survival matters to people on an individual basis and survival of the species matters to people on an individual basis. If the earth was destroyed and the humans there on, dead-most of those humans would be happy that some humans still live, somewhere.

Yeah, when the nuclear holocaust comes we'll all die happy knowing bush is safe in his bunker.

All of this is also assuming that interstellar travel will always be so enormously difficult that there will not be any economic incentive to settle on other planets. If that is the case, remains to be seen.

The bigger assumption is that interstellar travel will ever be even remotely feasible, if at all possible.

[SlowwHand]

More to the point, if a bomb shelter worked, then what?

[Vesayen]

Originally posted by General Ludd
Because they where scared ****less and someone saw a way of marketing something to take advantage of it. If a nuclear war destroyed most of the planet, what the **** is a bomb shelter going to do about? Great, you can live out your life completely alone in a tomb, eating canned vegtebles and spam .

You raised the issue that individuals of a species dont care about their individual, or special survival after a huge cataclysm, this was showing that is not the case. If they were WRONG about expectations of survival is irrelevant to the point.

Originally posted by General Ludd
Politicians taking advantage of their position so that they don't have to face the consequences of their actions is hardly an argument for the feasability of space colonization.

No, but it is once again an example that we expend considerable resources TODAY to see "we" survive in some form, even in the case of a world shattering event which kills off 99% of the population.

Again, you said no species will devote resources to the survival of the species if it means the overwhelming majority died, which is again proven wrong in a real world example. We do it.

Originally posted by General Ludd
It is impossible to create a colony that would be completely independant of the home planet without the use of sci-fi technology. And if we are to assume that this hypthetical alien race has such technology at their disposal, than it's just as well to assume that the same technology will allow them to prevent any sort of catastrophe from happening, anyways. It happens in the movies, doesn't it?

What the heck are you basing this off of? Why can't a colony become self sufficient? Suppose we discover some giant island in the middle of the Atlantic which has been completely uninhabited. Are you saying there is any industry or means of production we can't bring WITH US to that place? You are assuming it will be impossible to ever overcome the problems of the distance of space and just BRING the industry there, or a means to develop it there. Both of these assumptions are spurious. Is it fair to assume no species will ever learn a way to overcome the distance of space in an economical manner? Is it fair to assume unknown technologies like nanotech will not allow for entire industries and means of production to be created with minimal effort?

You keep waving your hand and saying "PAH! Science fiction!" all you want, that does not SAY anything.

How much of science fiction from the last hundred years, exists as real world technology today? Cell phones, atomic energy and atomic weapons, space travel, genetic engineering, COMPUTERS, the internet, hell, penicillin? If you told a person one hundred years ago we would today, have landed people on the moon repeatedly and sent a space craft out of the solar system(Voyager is in/past the ort cloud), they'd call you insane.

Assuming that new revolutionary technologies to overcome the problems of transport and production will not develop are spurious at best when in the last one hundred years we have seen that technology can expand rapidly in very short amounts of time to make the impossible common place in a single generation. Ask an 80 year old person today if they could of even imagined computers, the internet and cell phones today, let alone landing on the moon?

Originally posted by General Ludd
Not really. Supposedly, most species aren't even conscious so they can't acutaly "try" to do anything. Many would say that humans are the only conscious species, yet we're also the most self-destructive. You where just talking about nuclear holocaust - where does that fit into "perpetuating the species"?

Most species attempt to perpetuate themselves as a matter of biological course. The species which survive are those which are biologically, instinctually compelled to survive and to breed. It is likely that any(most) sentient species are the result of evolution, so they will have this same innate biological desire. Humans undeniably have it, there is no reason to assume any other sentient species which is the result of evolution would not also.

Originally posted by General Ludd
It means that expansion and growth doesn't guarantee survival. Often it does quite the opposite. Look at our current situation - we have a population that is exploding, and consumption that is sky rocketing. But we live, like everything else in this universe, in a limited environment. When something grows exponentially it inevtiably collapses. Expanding and colonizing will at best buy you a few extra minutes, and make the eventual catastrophe that much more catastrophic.

Correct, it does not guarantee survival but it makes it [orders of magnitude] orders of magnitude more likely. If humanity ever got a dozen worlds to the same population and developmental level as earth at that time, outside of the solar system, I doubt humanity would ever be wiped out-we’d spread throughout the galaxy and past it. Exponential growth may guarantee collapse in bacteria(it does not) it does not guarantee collapse is a human society which expands fifty thousand solar systems. You might also notice that bacteria which expands exponentially, is also the most successfully life form in the HISTORY of our planet. Bacteria outnumbers all other life in terms of individual organisms in numbers by an enormous amount and trounces all over life forms in sheer bio mass…. Exponential growth DOES work, the best surviving and most prolific species on our planet grows exponentially.

Our population growth has actually gone down in the last few years. I can’t say how population trends will change on earth, but assuming we spread to a few planets, it ceases to be an issue.

Originally posted by General Ludd
There isn't a remote possibility that mankind will last that long.

See above comment. You are seriously underestimating the power of technological advancement. All of this of course hinges on the ability to develop some way to travel between stars which is reasonable to a human society-this does not seem like an impossible problem. How many times in the last century have we made utterly EARTH SHATTERING discoveries which have changed the way we think about the world? The speed of technological advancement is increasing rapidly and has been, this will only advance as our technology gives us better tools of research.

Originally posted by General Ludd
Yeah, when the nuclear holocaust comes we'll all die happy knowing bush is safe in his bunker.

I won’t be happy its Bush but I’ll be a little happy knowing humanity(“us”) lives on. How many generations of soldiers have died knowing that though they died, other “us”(their families) lived and took solace in that?

Originally posted by General Ludd
The bigger assumption is that interstellar travel will ever be even remotely feasible, if at all possible.

Considering we have seen RAPID technological progress over the last century and it is only speeding up, that seems like a reasonable aasumption.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Vesayen

If they were WRONG about expectations of survival is irrelevant to the point.

Actually, it kind of is the point. Don't count on fiction to save your ass. I bet you'd laugh at someone who's counting on jesus to come at armeggedon and save human from damnation, but that's no less outlandish as your belief that humanity will live to be as old as the universe.

No, but it is once again an example that we expend considerable resources TODAY to see "we" survive in some form, even in the case of a world shattering event which kills off 99% of the population.

The thing is, if a nuclear war kills 99% of the population, the remaing 1% is just as dead. THe world is irradiated. It's uninhabitable. They'll live in solitude in their concrete tombs untill they kill themselves, and that will be the end of humanity.

Again, you said no species will devote resources to the survival of the species if it means the overwhelming majority died

No I didn't. What I said is that if earth goes kaput, so does humanity.

What the heck are you basing this off of? Why can't a colony become self sufficient? Suppose we discover some giant island in the middle of the Atlantic which has been completely uninhabited. Are you saying there is any industry or means of production we can't bring WITH US to that place? You are assuming it will be impossible to ever overcome the problems of the distance of space and just BRING the industry there, or a means to develop it there. Both of these assumptions are spurious. Is it fair to assume no species will ever learn a way to overcome the distance of space in an economical manner?

It has nothing to do with industry or economics. An island in the middle of the atlantic is hardly comparable to a planet with a toxic atmosphere, barren landscape and broiling temperatures (or whatever). There's only one Earth in the universe, and it's the only place we're suited to live on. Even in the ridiculously small chance that we could find another planet that is habitable which doesn't take billions of years to travel to, it will still be so alien that it'd likely be just as dangerous an environemnt to live in.

Is it fair to assume unknown technologies like nanotech will not allow for entire industries and means of production to be created with minimal effort?

I like how you can name unkown technologies. Faith is such a wonderful thing.

How much of science fiction from the last hundred years, exists as real world technology today?

As a whole of what was predicted? Very little, I imagine.

Cell phones, atomic energy and atomic weapons, space travel, genetic engineering, COMPUTERS, the internet, hell, penicillin? If you told a person one hundred years ago we would today, have landed people on the moon repeatedly and sent a space craft out of the solar system(Voyager is in/past the ort cloud), they'd call you insane.

Not if you told a natural scientist of the time. They'd only be surprised to find you didn't get there in a helium balloon.

[quote]Assuming that new revolutionary technologies to overcome the problems of transport and production will not develop are spurious at best when in the last one hundred years we have seen that technology can expand rapidly in very short amounts of time to make the impossible common place in a single generation. Ask an 80 year old person today if they could of even imagined computers, the internet and cell phones today, let alone landing on the moon? [quote]

This is no reason to assume that everything impossible will be possible, that everything dangerous will be made safe, and that everything wrong will be made right. Blind faith is a dangerous thing.

Correct, it does not guarantee survival but it makes it [orders of magnitude] orders of magnitude more likely. If humanity ever got a dozen worlds to the same population and developmental level as earth at that time, outside of the solar system, I doubt humanity would ever be wiped out-we’d spread throughout the galaxy and past it. Exponential growth may guarantee collapse in bacteria(it does not) it does not guarantee collapse is a human society which expands fifty thousand solar systems.

Alright, you don't watch too much sci-fi, you watch too much bad sci-fi. Colonizing fifty thousand solar systems? 12 planet earths? riiiight

You might also notice that bacteria which expands exponentially, is also the most successfully life form in the HISTORY of our planet. Bacteria outnumbers all other life in terms of individual organisms in numbers by an enormous amount and trounces all over life forms in sheer bio mass…. Exponential growth DOES work, the best surviving and most prolific species on our planet grows exponentially.

Bacteria is also microscopic.

Aside from the general stupidty of compairing bacteria to a mammal, it is even more unfair to compare the incredible range of different bacteria, as a whole, to a single species. Do you have any idea how many populations of bacteria have starved themsevles to death through exponential growth? I know I don't.

Our population growth has actually gone down in the last few years. I can’t say how population trends will change on earth, but assuming we spread to a few planets, it ceases to be an issue.

Here's hopin' for salvation.

I won’t be happy its Bush but I’ll be a little happy knowing humanity(“us”) lives on. How many generations of soldiers have died knowing that though they died, other “us”(their families) lived and took solace in that?

When it comes down to it, a soldier rarely dies for anyone but themselves. They may enlist with lofty ideals, but in the heat of battle, it's unlikely they're going to charge the enemy for their family (throwing their life away like that certainly isn't doing anything for their family anyways). They're doing it for their own self respect and pride - to do well in the eyes of their comrades, who are trapped there for the same stupid reason.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Kidicious
Too slow to be a comet though.

Comets don't appear to move any more than the Moon appears to move. You meant a meteor, which can appear to move quite slowly.

[Joseph]

Re: UFO's. What Do You Think?

Originally posted by SlowwHand
I was looking up various things in that Google Trends, and tried UFO's.
Australia is way ahead in general information seeking.
USA makes the list, but below doesn't reflect the traffic.

1. Brisbane Australia
2. Phoenix United States
3. Perth Australia
4. Brussels Belgium
5. Amsterdam Netherlands
6. Melbourne Australia
7. Los Angeles United States
8. San Diego United States
9. Houston United States
10. Sydney Australia

http://www.google.com/trends?q=ufo%27s

So, I don't know. What do you think about UFO's?
And yes, I fully expect to hear that one of you is an alien in disquise, and maybe another few have been abducted and prodded.

I think they are real, and I also think we have at lease one or more at Area 51 and not at dreamland, but at the other base that is about 15 miles west of dreamland.

[Richelieu]

Re: Re: UFO's. What Do You Think?

Originally posted by Joseph
I think they are real, and I also think we have at lease one or more at Area 51 and not at dreamland, but at the other base that is about 15 miles west of dreamland.

You scare me.

[Joseph]

Originally posted by Seeker
"But I'm sure an alien species would be interested in other life found in the universe. We're sure obsessed with it. A little green spot on mars would send scientists here into a spin."

think about that carefully though and how it would work in the real world...I guess that scenario could be true if FTL travel were theoretically possible but most physicists say no and never will be. Otherwise it's just too monstrously time consuming for something so frivolous.

A man of wealth and means in New York City was told in late 03 or early 04, that is 1903/4 that some brothers name Wright just flew an airplane. He said that they were fools and that so called plane would never amount to anything.

Some time later, most physicists said we will never go faster than sound. There is a wall that will crushed us.

Now what did you say about FTL speed?

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Joseph
Some time later, most physicists said we will never go faster than sound. There is a wall that will crushed us.

Now what did you say about FTL speed?

There's a difference. The sonic barrier was an engineering limit, while c is a hard physical limit as far as we can tell.

Of course, new discoveries could change that, and sci-fi stories are full of ideas that sidestep that limit.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by General Ludd
More like down a well. If a catastrophe where to destroy the planet of this alien civilization, having a couple fetishists floating around in a flying saucer on some backwater planet isn't going to do them any good.

Sure, a couple of them won't do the trick.

Though if they have 20,000 on another planet that will ensure the survival of their species.

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
There's a difference. The sonic barrier was an engineering limit, while c is a hard physical limit as far as we can tell.

And there was scientific proof at one point that if you exceeded 20 m.p.h. in a horseless carriage, the air would be sucked from your lungs and you'd suffocate.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Zkribbler
And there was scientific proof at one point that if you exceeded 20 m.p.h. in a horseless carriage, the air would be sucked from your lungs and you'd suffocate.

We just got better lungs

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Kidicious
What do you think the thing I saw was MrFun?

All I know is that what you saw was an Unidentified Flying Object and I seriously doubt it was an alien spacecraft.