UFOs - Is anybody out there?

[tomparryharry]

13 minutes ago, Reorte said:

Overly pessimistic I think. Random chance could always wipe out all life but it's failed to do so here yet, and we've reached the point where human survival will be robust enough to anything short of that. We're not going to "trash" the planet badly enough to wipe ourselves out.

 

A more likely possibility is a switch of technology away from radio, or with what radio there is generally being low-powered and short-range compared to the more easily detectable earlier transmissions. We're starting to head a little in that direction here.

Who's said that we must be? We don't know enough to be able to say how likely intelligence is to appear - a plausible case can be made for anything from we are the only intelligent life to it being commonplace.

 

Considering how behaviours evolve though I do find the "humanity's so terrible, aliens are much more likely to be far better" rather dismissive - a sort of reverse arrogance.

I'm sorry, I can't quite agree. Humans are full of high ideals, until you start dishing out money, and then people start losing morals quicker than silver sand.

[Steamport Southport]

[Reorte]

Just now, tomparryharry said:

I'm sorry, I can't quite agree. Humans are full of high ideals, until you start dishing out money, and then people start losing morals quicker than silver sand.

 

But why should aliens be any better? If you think of why those sorts of behaviours exist to begin with, the sorts of evolutionary pressures that created them (and went hand in hand with the ones that pushed the development of intelligence) there's no reason to believe that we're unusually awful. Again, without any other evidence plausible speculation can range right across the possible spectrum, but too often we're too keen on self-flagellation (and this from someone who's lost most of his faith for humanity).

 

[tomparryharry]

1 minute ago, adb968008 said:

Some of us think DCC is out of date, that Cordless chargeable model railways operated by wifi with a cheap CPU could replace DCC for less than its current cost… but we are heretics too.

 

If I said I bought a 12 v UFO on Amazon for under £20 that pretty much does that with rotors instead of wings, would I attract believers / followers or be burned again at the stake as I obviously wasnt cooked enough last time.

 

So, these  Ever-Ready U2 batteries from 1966, any good? 

[adb968008]

2 minutes ago, tomparryharry said:

So, these  Ever-Ready U2 batteries from 1966, any good? 

I’m sure Bono is an alien i’m convinced of it.

[SHMD]

2 hours ago, Crisis Rail said:

 

Odd that in all of todays photographic digital technology we still have to try and decipher a few grainy images be it from a fighter jet HUD display or elsewhere.

 

Why nothing has been published after 8 decades or so of interest to prove conclusively and say "there you go" I don't know.

 

 

 

Grainy images are all we have AND all we will ever get.

As imaging technology improves, then the UFO becomes identifiable - as it has done in all previous cases.*

(*Except spoofs.)

 

A lot of people see a lack of proof, one way or the other, as proof - in their favour - of something extraordinary.

 

Re - the expanding shell of Electro-Magnetic radiation. This is attenuating fast and, at relatively local distances, will become indistinguishable from the background radiations.

 

 

Kev.

[AndrueC]

I automatically discount any suggestion that craft with lights on are aliens because it makes no sense.

If they wanted us to know they existed they'd land in the middle of a motorway (or in front of the Whitehouse) or take over the air waves broadcasting a message to us. The idea that an alien capable of building a craft that can travel FTL or trans-dimensionally being unable to work out how to communicate with us is if they wish to is ridiculous.

Similarly if they don't want us to know they are visiting they will ensure that their navigation lights are off, window blinds are drawn and that the 'hyper-mega cloaking shield 3000' is enabled. They could spend a week hovering over Area 51 while holding a raucous party and no human would ever be any the wiser.

Now having written that I will state that I believe that intelligent aliens exist. I think it's reasonable to assume that some have even discovered how to travel the vast distances between stars. But space is so big that the chances of them ever having come here are miniscule.

And I think that if aliens do ever come here they'll most likely ignore us for the same reason we ignore an ant heap that we happened to see on the side of a woodland path. We'd just not be important enough for them to bother with, stuck down at the bottom of a gravity well we can barely climb out of. If little Charlie has to come up with a project for playschool he might drop a couple of 'spy satellites' off but even then his teacher will probably chastise him for being lazy.

Edited July 5, 2021 by AndrueC

[Reorte]

4 minutes ago, AndrueC said:

And I think that if aliens do ever come here they'll most likely ignore us for the same reason we ignore an ant heap that we happened to see on the side of a woodland path. We'd just not be important enough for them to bother with, stuck down at the bottom of a gravity well we can barely climb out of. If little Charlie has to come up with a project for playschool he might drop a couple of 'spy satellites' off but even then his teacher will probably chastise him for being lazy.

 

That all depends on just how common life, and especially intelligent life is in the universe. If it's everywhere, then probably, yes, that's all they'd do. If it's few and far between then any occurrence of it would be of significant interest. Although the universe is so big that "none other than Earth" seems pretty unlikely anything more precise than that is beyond what we've got the knowledge to estimate. We're making a little progress in that direction - the ability to detect other planets around other stars and finding that they're common is a good starting point. Atmospheric composition would be another clue, and we're starting to get the first hints of that. Techniques favour finding not very Earthlike planets (although of course we can't rule out other conditions), but they're constantly being refined.

[jonny777]

24 minutes ago, AndrueC said:

I automatically discount any suggestion that craft with lights on are aliens because it makes no sense.

If they wanted us to know they existed they'd land in the middle of a motorway (or in front of the Whitehouse) or take over the air waves broadcasting a message to us. 

 

You obviously have not read this article - 

 

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/eisenhower-met-aliens-says-timothy-good_n_1277133

 

Whether you wish to believe it or not is entirely up to you. I make no comment on my opinions either way. However, it does seem to have a veneer of respectability about it, at least. 

[adb968008]

Aliens have been to Area 51, they deposited a bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale there.

 

In March 1999 an unresident alien came to visit a resident alien in Nevada for a summit meeting.

The resident Alien settled in California working in a secretive technology called dotcom, designing algorithms. That visiting alien invited a diplomatic visit of a fellow university friend on an official state jolly which included California, Nevada and Tijuana.

A gift was presented, an inflatable bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale..

 

it was taken to the very limit of Area 51… the point of no crossing the line..

(there is actually a car beyond the sign, we werent willing to go further incase they decided to ask what we were doing).

 

The bottle travelled at great speed in a brand new pontiac sunfire… to & from Vegas in a journey of about 4 hours round trip along desert roads passing pretty much nothing else..no cars, houses (a random red mailbox I recall).

 

 

and posed for official photographs….

 

before returning to the Alien embassy in Las Vegas to drink something similar…

 

The only thing is, after driving back 5 minutes, we realised we’d left the bottle on the ridge, and had to drive back for it.

 

The bottle visited many places over the next year, before bursting on a cactus in Arizona… conclusion.. there is nobody out there, and if there is, its of limited intelligence.

 

Edited July 5, 2021 by adb968008

[jonny777]

Is it possible that this thread might be used for a grown up discussion of a subject which some of us wish to partake in, however far fetched? 

 

After 13 pages, might it also be possible for the self appointed 'comedians', with their never ending puerile posts, to maybe start their own thread somewhere else? 

 

May I suggest the CBeebies forum? 

[woodenhead]

5 minutes ago, jonny777 said:

Is it possible that this thread might be used for a grown up discussion of a subject which some of us wish to partake in, however far fetched? 

 

After 13 pages, might it also be possible for the self appointed 'comedians', with their never ending puerile posts, to maybe start their own thread somewhere else? 

 

May I suggest the CBeebies forum? 

You want to moderate a discussion on whether or not there are aliens amongst us which by your own admission may be far fetched?

 

It's probing time

 

 

Sorry, couldn't resist a Paul reference.

[adb968008]

32 minutes ago, jonny777 said:

Is it possible that this thread might be used for a grown up discussion of a subject which some of us wish to partake in, however far fetched? 

 

After 13 pages, might it also be possible for the self appointed 'comedians', with their never ending puerile posts, to maybe start their own thread somewhere else? 

 

May I suggest the CBeebies forum? 

Sorry for spoiling your bedtime dreams on Area 51.
But there is reading and there is doing.

 

I went there and found nowt, if you want to believe differently be my guest… but trust me, theres nothing out there, except tumbleweed, rocks and dirt.. 1 row of ramshackle houses, a “garage sized” museum, not even a gas station... but there are a few radiation monitors, which might explain more about the smoke and mirrors stories of the 1950’s about what was really happening there.

 

meet the residents… a humble cow, or something more sinister ?

 it was a good day out to test a new car and put a focus on reality vs money making myth

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 5, 2021 by adb968008

[boxbrownie]

1 hour ago, adb968008 said:

20 years ago I was privilege to some rather high quality imagery, in real time from a government satelite, so clear I could read the tail sign of a commercial airliner in flight.

 

 

 

One of my best mates used to work for Marconi military division back in the late seventies, we were chatting about spy sats as that what he was working in at the time and the biggest issue was atmospheric distortion, but they almost had it cracked using three dimensional interpolation using multi level scanning images, so much so that they could resolve down to the size of a broadsheet (news paper) on the ground, no they couldn’t read it….but hey that was 50 years ago!

[rob D2]

I don’t know why people keep going on about grainy images - the FLIR tapes from the F18s are clear as day, and the aura given off from the targets is intriguing .

 

Forget light speed travel , that’s very 1970s Star Wars - try anti gravity propulsion instead .

 

Some people will never believe anything about aliens as it doesn’t fit their narrative .

[adb968008]

20 minutes ago, boxbrownie said:

One of my best mates used to work for Marconi military division back in the late seventies, we were chatting about spy sats as that what he was working in at the time and the biggest issue was atmospheric distortion, but they almost had it cracked using three dimensional interpolation using multi level scanning images, so much so that they could resolve down to the size of a broadsheet (news paper) on the ground, no they couldn’t read it….but hey that was 50 years ago!

Not bad, in my case it was live feed video I was watching.

The closest I recall commercially was the coverage of Felix Baumgartner’s jump from 127k ft, and that ground based cameras actually pinpointed his jump with clarity of his outline, and captured it throughout the descent in 2012.

 

Tech for video imagery today is mm precision, realtime video  from Satelite.. so any alien would need an invisibility cloak to be undetected, to multiple cooperating nations in collusion… but that doesn't seem to matter to believers.

Edited July 5, 2021 by adb968008

[Gibbo675]

Hi Folks,

 

With regard these aliens, what scale are they ? I have always found it quite incredulous that they might be approximately the size of humans as this does seem a little convenient. Another point to consider would be the gravitational pull of the earth compared to the planet that these aliens have come from and how it might affect them along with the make up of the atmosphere.

 

What if !?!?!?!?!?!?! * Corona virus is an alien invasion and it has infected everyone's mind to the point that we all argue about unfathomable nonsense on t'intermunky.

 

Gibbo.

 

* Secondary nonsense placed there to annoy Guardian readers**

** Tertiary nonsense to annoy watchers of the BBC***

*** Have you not worked it out yet ?

[woodenhead]

But it all comes back to why would you travel all that way and hide, surely you'd want to make contact with the indigenous population.

 

Or do we believe we would travel across the galaxy and start kidnapping people to experiment on or blow up their equivalent of cattle.

 

This is why I believe what we think of as a UFO is earthbound and military technology, all those triangular craft in the 1980s - stealth aircraft.  When the mind does not understand what it is seeing it can distort the truth, no-one knew about black triangular aircraft in 1980 except those who had built or flown them.

 

Flying saucers, which came first, the sci-fi or the sighting of them, the US created a hysteria back in the 1950s just about the time that the Russians wanted to know all about the US weapons programmes.  Tell people about scary flying saucers and people see scary flying saucers.

 

Isn't it odd that now they are no longer saucer shaped, did the aliens develop new technology or is it simply a new lie being told so we are conditioned to look for orbs and triangles.

 

I believe there are alien lifeforms, but given the vast distances which are growing as the universe expands and the chances of them coming are getting smaller.

 

We want to believe because for humans it is our once chance of survival - either we perish when we ruin it ourselves or we perish when the sun decides it's time to get all big and bloaty.  If we know aliens have visited then perhaps we too can travel to another planet - but finding one and for want of a better word invading it, that is the real science fiction.

[adb968008]

 

1. Be over 18

2. Be alone.

3. shut the door, the language is interesting.

4. Google..

Zontar Starts The Deltic Scrap Line

 

I want to believe.. I really do..

 

 

Woodenheads post nails it imho..

 

Aliens didnt really exist before WW2.

They really only appeared in the 1950’s in Nevada..

Nevada was testing Atomic bombs, it needed a clear space, a smokescreen.. Aliens for Russian spys, is as good as Carrots are of seeing in the dark for german spies.

 

its easy to see why little green men became focus, America considers anyone non-US as an Alien.. not a little green man, but a person not from the US… to someone unfamiliar with that term its easy to see how the jump went from Johnny foreigner* in 1950’s Redneck Nevada, to Little green men on the internet.

 

* (probably a German speaking rocket scientist)

 

 

The flying saucer changed shape to a triangular spaceship at the time of the Blackbird / Stealth-bombers appearance in the 1970’s/80’s… again Art mimicking science.

 

There might be life in another galaxy, but the chances of them speaking English is next to zero. But theres a lot of money to be made out of it.

 

 

 

Edited July 5, 2021 by adb968008

[AndrueC]

46 minutes ago, jonny777 said:

 

You obviously have not read this article - 

 

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/eisenhower-met-aliens-says-timothy-good_n_1277133

 

Whether you wish to believe it or not is entirely up to you. I make no comment on my opinions either way. However, it does seem to have a veneer of respectability about it, at least. 

There's almost nothing of any substance in that article. It's a short piece about things that supposedly happened that no-one can actually prove. And it doesn't particularly contradict anything I posted. The main thrust of what I posted was that unidentified craft flying around with their lights on are highly unlikely to be aliens.  That article doesn't say that the aliens that Pres. Eisenhower met flew around with their lights on. It doesn't actually say how they arrived on Earth.

 

I see nothing in that article that would make me revise my opinion.

[Gibbo675]

11 minutes ago, adb968008 said:

 

1. Be over 18

2. Be alone.

3. shut the door, the language is interesting.

4. Google..

Zontar Starts The Deltic Scrap Line

 

I want to believe.. I really do..

You asked for it:

 

 

The one with the class 45 015 is funnier though.

 

Gibbo.

Edited July 5, 2021 by Gibbo675
Loco Number

[2750Papyrus]

Did the concept of little green men originate in the US/Internationally, or did Dan Dare's battling with the Treens in the much lamented Eagle give Fleet Street a convenient label?

[AndrueC]

29 minutes ago, rob D2 said:

Some people will never believe anything about aliens as it doesn’t fit their narrative .

And some people will believe anything and have never heard of Occam's Razor.

 

I love the idea of alien life. As a child and for the earlier part of my adult life I was a huge science-fiction reader. I particularly enjoyed CJ Cherryh's Alliance/Compact series and that of Ian M Banks. I would love to talk to an alien, exchange ideas (*) and see the universe from a totally different perspective. I'd love to travel to different stars.

 

But I'm also a realist. I don't want to play 'pretend aliens'. I want something that can be proven. The USAF footage is interesting for sure but it still doesn't meet my standards. Sorry.

 

(*)Assuming we can meaningfully communicate. I've also read most of Cherryh's Atevi novels and understand that you might need more than just a dictionary to communicate. Or the Tc'a, Chi and Knnn of her Compact series which pretty much nobody has ever worked out how to talk to.

Edited July 5, 2021 by AndrueC

[adb968008]

Before the age of flight, dont forget Seamen used to talk of Mermaids and Sea Monsters… beyond the coast of Penzance there be dragons… even the Loch Ness Monster didnt fly or have wings in the 1930’s… Children saw fairies, pixies and elves, not Aliens from the planet Zog.

 

it was the perils of the deep unknown, that scared children in bed at night.

 

From the 13th century, until the 1950’s, a Rocket wasnt a space ship, it was an unguided missile.

 

Now if the naval archives were full of 15th century stories of flying saucers.. there could be more credibility to modern day myths… but the scary stories of victorian england was more 20,000 leagues under the sea, not 20,000 feet above it.

 

inconvenient truth unfortunately, but one that makes a lot of money.

 

 

Edited July 5, 2021 by adb968008

[woodenhead]

it's also interesting that all this is going on just as the Chinese & Russians are boosting their military capability using very modern technology, unlike the Russians from the Cold War, a new Cold War will be based on very equal and exotic technology.