Who here believes in UFOs, Abductions and/or Extraterrestrial life?

[John21]

I admit from reading the topics on this site I feel there is a bias against the extraterrestrial hypothesis for some events occurring on Earth. I would like to say that I DO believe that we are currently being visited by entities of an extraterrestrial or inter-dimensional nature, but I also believe their is a conventional explanation for some of these sightings.

I would like to hear what other people think of the extraterrestrial hypothesis as an answer to what is happening today and in the past. I would not mind pros and cons from both sides of the argument to pipe in here and share their idea with everyone.

 

[Anderman]

Well i don´t believe that we are visited by aliens at the moment but i have no problem to believe in extraterrestrial live even in extraterrestrial intelligent live after all the universe in damn big. ;D

 

[lancer21]

I do believe in extraterrestrial life, but i'm pretty sure that UFO and especially abductions and green man sticking things up some poor jimbobs a*** is nonsense...i meen think about it , why this amazingly advanced civilization with this incredible space travel technology comes from thousands of light years away just for some poor fella or for making funny shapes in a crop field ( i know they are fake )...doesn't make any sense does it?

IMO i think the reason we didnt had anyone comeing here yet ( at least , not in modern times), is that it may be actually impossible to travel faster than light , that theres indeed a limit , and whos gonna spend thousands of years frozen in a ship just to come here ?( if they know we are here ...our radiowaves are only about 74 lights years away , which is nothing in the imensity of space ...)

On the other hand, as a friend of mine pointed out , even if a civilization can master indeed interstelar travel , and they do come here , chances are that they are going to do to us what us ( i meen the more so called "advanced" cultures) did to native americans ,or mayans, or africans ...not a happy thought innit ?

 

[Justo Miranda]

• Alien life is very possible due to the abundant variety of amino acids found by radio astronomers in interstellar clouds.
• Intelligent alien life is statistically probable (Frank Drake equation)
• Intelligent alien life interested in interstellar travel is less probable. It would have to be an energy rich culture, with the curiosity of a young civilization ( In ours, it only lasted 40 years) or with the conquest spirit of some mad individuals. Difficult that all these factors coincide in the same society.
• Chronologically speaking, it is not very probable that two civilizations evolve at the same time and are ready for contact. A few thousand years are not much for a galaxy and a too long period for the UN, NATO or the III Reich.
• From the energy consumption point of view, inter-dimensional travel is much cheaper. I use it some Saturdays by paying around USD 150

 

[bobbymike]

The Fermi Paradox - If life is prevalent across the Universe where are they. It can be extrapolated that man will achieve 1/10 the speed of light travel within the next 500 years (pessimistic). At that speed mankind could travel across our Galaxy in a few millions years. There are parts of our Galaxy that are BILLIONS of years older than Earth. Meaning they should be here by now.

I have posted before about a book by Marshall Savage (endorsed by Aurthur C Clarke) called "The Millennial Project: Colonizing the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps" it explains all this.

Another really interesting calculation from the book shows why the argument that says "because there are trillions of stars and possibly trillions of earth like planets there HAS TO BE intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe". But unless you understand biology even with trillions of planets the odds of "chemicals" self assembling into complex branch chain (real life forms not the precursors that happened in the phony laboratory experiment from years ago) amino acids and then to keep assembling into more and more complex life forms is on the order of 1 X 10 to the 53rd power. That number is so large as to make a trillion totally insignificant.

For the future of mankind we should assume we are alone and get of this lonely blue marble oursleves. There will be Martians and they will be us.

 

[sferrin]

• Alien life is very possible due to the abundant variety of amino acids found by radio astronomers in interstellar clouds.
• Intelligent alien life is statistically probable (Frank Drake equation)
• Intelligent alien life interested in interstellar travel is less probable. It would have to be an energy rich culture, with the curiosity of a young civilization ( In ours, it only lasted 40 years) or with the conquest spirit of some mad individuals. Difficult that all these factors coincide in the same society.
• Chronologically speaking, it is not very probable that two civilizations evolve at the same time and are ready for contact. A few thousand years are not much for a galaxy and a too long period for the UN, NATO or the III Reich.
• From the energy consumption point of view, inter-dimensional travel is much cheaper. I use it some Saturdays by paying around USD 150

I use to have that book too.

 

[Dreamfighter]

Perhaps from time to time an extremist microbe from deep outer space hijackes a meteorite to commit a suicidal crash on Earth.

 

[quellish]

I admit from reading the topics on this site I feel there is a bias against the extraterrestrial hypothesis for some events occurring on Earth. I would like to say that I DO believe that we are currently being visited by entities of an extraterrestrial or inter-dimensional nature, but I also believe their is a conventional explanation for some of these sightings.

I would like to hear what other people think of the extraterrestrial hypothesis as an answer to what is happening today and in the past. I would not mind pros and cons from both sides of the argument to pipe in here and share their idea with everyone.

I think it is important to point out that the subject of the thread covers three very different things.
Extraterrestrial life, UFOs, and alien abductions are three things with no obvious connections between them. They're distinctly different things.

That said....
Life outside of our own planet is likely.
Intelligent life, less likely.
Intelligent life that has vistited Earth, overtly or covertly, very, very unlikely.

If there were spacecraft visting earth on a regular basis, they would be leaving traces all over the place. Commercial satellite imaging companies would have frame after frame of flying saucers on their website.

 

[Hammer Birchgrove]

I do believe in extraterrestrial life, but i'm pretty sure that UFO and especially abductions and green man sticking things up some poor jimbobs a*** is nonsense...i mean think about it , why this amazingly advanced civilization with this incredible space travel technology comes from thousands of light years away just for some poor fella or for making funny shapes in a crop field ( i know they are fake )...doesn't make any sense does it?

IMO i think the reason we didn't had anyone coming here yet ( at least , not in modern times), is that it may be actually impossible to travel faster than light , that there's indeed a limit , and who's gonna spend thousands of years frozen in a ship just to come here ?( if they know we are here ...our radiowaves are only about 74 lights years away , which is nothing in the immensity of space ...)

On the other hand, as a friend of mine pointed out , even if a civilization can master indeed interstellar travel , and they do come here , chances are that they are going to do to us what us ( i mean the more so called "advanced" cultures) did to native americans ,or mayans, or africans ...not a happy thought innit ?

I agree with most of what you're saying. I hope though that through wormholes or warp drive or whatever, someone, preferably us humans, will master interstellar travel, and that if an advanced civilization comes here, they will be nice enough not to kill us. On the other hand, if they send "missionaries" rather than troops, it could be as devastating to Earth culture.

On possibility is that they "they" ARE sending scientists to here, but they do it covertly due to some "Prime Directive". They'll have to be some nifty shape-shifters though.

 

[Hammer Birchgrove]

• Alien life is very possible due to the abundant variety of amino acids found by radio astronomers in interstellar clouds.
• Intelligent alien life is statistically probable (Frank Drake equation)
• Intelligent alien life interested in interstellar travel is less probable. It would have to be an energy rich culture, with the curiosity of a young civilization ( In ours, it only lasted 40 years) or with the conquest spirit of some mad individuals. Difficult that all these factors coincide in the same society.
• Chronologically speaking, it is not very probable that two civilizations evolve at the same time and are ready for contact. A few thousand years are not much for a galaxy and a too long period for the UN, NATO or the III Reich.
• From the energy consumption point of view, inter-dimensional travel is much cheaper. I use it some Saturdays by paying around USD 150

There's the theory of cyclical history as proposed by Oswald Spengler (and developed in fiction by A.E. van Vogt, Robert A. Heinlein and Isaac Asimov). According to that theory, a civilization can be "young" and even barbaric, and yet high-tech, since civilizations comes and goes, though most of the technological progress done by the previous civilizations aren't forgotten.

 

[Stargazer]

Although a professed Christian I do not have any problems with the notion that there could be life elsewhere in the universe in some form or other. Nor do I have any problems with the notion of the evolution of species as part of creation's greater design.

What bugs me is that supposing there IS life elsewhere, why would it be necessarily more advanced than we are? And supposing they mastered space travel to the extent that they can travel across solar systems, even galaxies, why would they mostly visit the US or abduct US citizens?

Also, I'm annoyed with the anthropocentric vision of life in outer space: why humanoid forms? Why arms, legs, eyes like ours? Life forms even on Earth display such diversity that thinking an alien life form could be even remotely similar to us seems to me like such an unrealistic pretense...

 

[Lauge]

Also, I'm annoyed with the anthropocentric vision of life in outer space: why humanoid forms? Why arms, legs, eyes like ours? Life forms even on Earth display such diversity that thinking an alien life form could be even remotely similar to us seems to me like such an unrealistic pretense...

HEAR, HEAR. One of the major problems with the current search for extra-terrestrial life (e.g. SETI) is that no one seems to have answered what I feel is The Big Question: "What is life?". What does something-or-other have to do or be (or do-be-do-be-doo, as Sinatra put it ) to be considered "life"?

As mentioned in a post elsewhere on this forum, I can recommend "Evolving the Alien: The Science of Extraterrestrial Life", by biologist Jack Cohen and mathematician Ian Stewart, where they (among other things) thoroughly trounce the "Humanoids-with-botched-nose-jobs"-view of what aliens (intelligent or otherwise) might look like.

Having said that I sincerely hope and believe that we are not alone. That there are other life forms and other civilisations out there. The Universe would be a pretty dull place if not :-[

Regards & all,

Thomas L. Nielsen
Luxembourg

 

[Abraham Gubler]

HEAR, HEAR. One of the major problems with the current search for extra-terrestrial life (e.g. SETI) is that no one seems to have answered what I feel is The Big Question: "What is life?". What does something-or-other have to do or be (or do-be-do-be-doo, as Sinatra put it ) to be considered "life"?

Don't know where you are looking for answers but the typical scientific definition of life is a condition which distinguishes active organisms from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, functional activity and the continual change preceding death. This is a very wide description but usually involves an awful lot of complexity compared to inorganic matter.

The biggest problem with any kind of discussion asking about UFOs, the universe, life, god, etc is human imagination. It is possible for us to imagine in our minds a range of things that can not and do not exist in our universe with the same degree of certainty that we can imagine things that actually exist.

It is pretty pointless having such a discussion with anyone involved who is not able to discipline their imagination to understand this difference.

 

[Michel Van]

If i look nights in sky and see the Universe
i ask my self "all this vast space and we are only one here ?"
no way !
even statistical with 200 billion stars in our galaxy
if only 1% have intelligent live makes 2 billion worlds !

how the look like ?
the best speculation made Gene Bylinsky
his Idea:

if law of physic are same all over Universe
why not the law of biological evolution by natural selection also ?

his conclusion most of the intelligent Extraterrestrial life will be more like
dinosaur, birds, marsupials, even Dolphins with arms and legs...

more of this in his book:
Life in Darwin's Universe, Evolution and the Cosmos
ISBN 978-0385170499
also take a look in
"Evolving the Alien: The Science of Extraterrestrial Life"
by Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart


So were is everbody ? aka (The Fermi Paradox)
there zillion theory's about this
i keep on Stephen Baxter conclusion on that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Baxter

Were just to stupid to see them or just deny it, if we see the real thing

more of this, read his Manifold series
"Manifold: Time", "Manifold: Space", "Manifold: Origin" and "Phase Space"

on UFOs
me as eyewitness of Ufos, i not belief in Littel Green..ay men from Mars Space
i try to find a rationally answer to Wat i saw ( or i deny the real thing ?)
like the 1989 Ufowave was has something to do with US Military and collaps of East Block ???

sadly Ufology has become a big money business
were people sell there nonsense for bucks
by way dit you know that George Adamski try to sell a script in 1950
for a Sci-fi book called "Flying Saucers Have Landed" ?
All the Publishers say "NO that skrip is to boring"
but 2 year later it was publish as "contactees report" :...

 

[starviking]

There's the theory of cyclical history as proposed by Oswald Spengler (and developed in fiction by A.E. van Vogt, Robert A. Heinlein and Isaac Asimov). According to that theory, a civilization can be "young" and even barbaric, and yet high-tech, since civilizations comes and goes, though most of the technological progress done by the previous civilizations aren't forgotten.

I don't know about that - look at the effects of institutions losing personnel with technical know-how (Orionblamblam posted an excellent piece about this regarding solid fuel rockets). Now imagine you lose all that - as your civilization collapsed - and you have to build up again without the easily accessed resources your forebears had.

I think you'd have to be very patient, persistent and have the greatest respect for learning. Barbarians don't fit the bill in my book.

 

[Kryptid]

The Fermi Paradox - If life is prevalent across the Universe where are they. It can be extrapolated that man will achieve 1/10 the speed of light travel within the next 500 years (pessimistic). At that speed mankind could travel across our Galaxy in a few millions years. There are parts of our Galaxy that are BILLIONS of years older than Earth. Meaning they should be here by now.

Maybe they are here, but they are so advanced that they can conceal their presence from us. When we make a camera that looks like a rock and set it on the African savannah, do you think that the animals that walk past it are aware that it isn't just a rock, but that it is a device designed by a more intelligent species? Something similar could be going on with aliens.

No, I don't believe that aliens are hiding among us. This is just a thought of speculation.

 

[Steve Pace]

The world's rife with aliens. There's aliens living right here in my neighborhood. There's some from Mexico, Cambodia, Canada, Somoa and Viet Nam. Maybe elsewhere too...

 

[starviking]

The world's rife with aliens. There's aliens living right here in my neighborhood. There's some from Mexico, Cambodia, Canada, Somoa and Viet Nam. Maybe elsewhere too...

I've an "Alien Registration Card" that proves it! ;D

 

[sublight]

I think there is a direct correlation between the sightings of "saucers" during the age of balloons for testing and reconnaissance and now "ufo's" are triangles starting around the age of Lockheed/Northrup triangular stealth.

I am absolutely not saying the pentagon has "alien" tech. I am saying over the years that their classified programs have been consistently been misinterpreted in origin and compounded by the fact that they still haven't declassified a large amount of said programs.

 

[sublight]

I would like to hear what other people think of the extraterrestrial hypothesis as an answer to what is happening today and in the past. I would not mind pros and cons from both sides of the argument to pipe in here and share their idea with everyone.

If I was from somewhere else in the galaxy, I would likely be tens of thousands of years more advanced than humans. I would not bother traveling with my physical body. Connections into my brain would let me virtually experience my presence at the same fidelity as my biological senses.

I wouldn't be interested in having a conversation with humans because it would be about as necessary as talking to ants. Instead I would have a look at the composition of their planet, get a couple samples of DNA and plug it into a "uber computer" that could simulate the earth down to the molecular level, and it would tell me about everything I need to know without having to look at their history or culture.

It is us humans that overestimate our self importance to the point of thinking aliens would be remotely interested in us.

 

[Orionblamblam]

If I was from somewhere else in the galaxy, I would likely be tens of thousands of years more advanced than humans.

Earth is about 4.5 billion years old. It's had single-celled life for the bulk of that time, around 4 billion years. It only transitioned to mulitcelled life around 550 million years ago. By the Permian era 300 million years ago, land-based life was approximately as complex as it is today. Numerous mass extinctions, such as the Permian about 250 million years ago and the K-T 65 million years ago, threw things into chaos

Point being: another world with similar life but a different history could easily compress that 4 billion years of life into a much smaller timeframe. Go from single celled to multicelled in 0.5 billion years rather than 3.5 billion, for example. And of course Earth and the Sun are hardly the oldest system in the galaxy. So chances are that there has been mulicelled life out there somewhere for maybe ten billion years longer than it's been on Earth. With the result that intelligence could easily be billions of years older than it is on Earth.

I defy *anyone* to claim with confidence and adequate backup what the motives would be of a intelligent being or species even 1,000 years more technologically adv anced than us, never mind billions.

 

[sublight]

I defy *anyone* to claim with confidence and adequate backup what the motives would be of a intelligent being or species even 1,000 years more technologically advanced than us, never mind billions.

I think my theory still stands. If they are that far advanced, they have enough computing power to pretty much simulate anything in the universe. Our planet just wouldn't hold enough interest to necessitate contact.

 

[Vpanoptes]

I would like to hear what other people think of the extraterrestrial hypothesis as an answer to what is happening today and in the past. I would not mind pros and cons from both sides of the argument to pipe in here and share their idea with everyone.

Instead I would have a look at the composition of their planet, get a couple samples of DNA and plug it into a "uber computer" that could simulate the earth down to the molecular level, and it would tell me about everything I need to know without having to look at their history or culture.

Interesting point - kind of an extreme genetic/molecular reductionist view. However, given what we know about epigenetics, ecology in general, ecosystem structure, function and interactions, the fallacy of evolutionary determinism and probability theory, (not to mention human history) the most charitable thing most scientists would say about this sentence is "I seriously doubt it". Though not without its flaws, read Steven Jay Gould's "Wonderful Life" and Simon Conway Morris' (among others) responses and rebuttals.

 

[prolific1]

I admit from reading the topics on this site I feel there is a bias against the extraterrestrial hypothesis for some events occurring on Earth.

That's cuz there be a bunch of empiricists amongst our brethren. ;D

 

[Orionblamblam]

Our planet just wouldn't hold enough interest to necessitate contact.

Maybe, maybe not. If intelligent life is relatively easy to create, there may well be thousands or millions of such species prowling the galaxy... most of whom would by definition be more advance than us. Everywhere from decades more advanced to billions of years. Making assumptions about what one such species would want or value is unwarranted. Making such assumptions about *many* species would be silly. Some would ignore us as being too far beneath their notice. Some might find us entertaining, as we are entertained by the antics of such minimally evolved creatures as ants, fish and Paris Hilton. Some might have a religious motive for messing with us, for good or ill. And some would be as multi-facetted as humans themselves are. Where are the Vorlon Amway salesmen? Where are the Organian Jehovah's Witnesses? Where are the drunken Shadow fratboys?

 

[Vpanoptes]

Our planet just wouldn't hold enough interest to necessitate contact.

Some might find us entertaining, as we are entertained by the antics of such minimally evolved creatures as ants, fish and Paris Hilton.

Oh come on now, isn't that being a bit unfair? To the ants and fish I mean.. ;D

 

[sublight]

I am with Michel Van on the Belgian UFO wave. I blame you forum members out there for not digging hard enough. Its some recon craft that you guys haven't sniffed out yet.....

 

[Lauge]

Don't know where you are looking for answers but the typical scientific definition of life is a condition which distinguishes active organisms from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, functional activity and the continual change preceding death. This is a very wide description but usually involves an awful lot of complexity compared to inorganic matter.

OK, I'll be a bit more specific. What I miss is not so much a definition of life per se, but having this definition applied to the search for extra-terrestrial life.

I seem to see far too many researchers and scientists talking about "life", when what they mean is "life as we know it here on Earth". Instead of looking at a planet like, say, Venus and concluding that it could never host life, might it not be more interesting and potentially rewarding to look at it and ask "If there is life there, what might it be like?".

The biggest problem with any kind of discussion asking about UFOs, the universe, life, god, etc is human imagination. It is possible for us to imagine in our minds a range of things that can not and do not exist in our universe with the same degree of certainty that we can imagine things that actually exist.

It is pretty pointless having such a discussion with anyone involved who is not able to discipline their imagination to understand this difference.

Agreed.

Regards & all,

Thomas L. Nielsen
Luxembourg

 

[Orionblamblam]

Instead of looking at a planet like, say, Venus and concluding that it could never host life, might it not be more interesting and potentially rewarding to look at it and ask "If there is life there, what might it be like?".

More interesting, less scientific. Hypothesize all you want, all that's really going to matte is what's really there. For years the hypothesis was that Venus was populated by dinosaurs. The logic was simple... Venus is covered in white clouds, which means lots of water vapor, which - coupled with being closer to the sun - means Venus is hot and wet, which means swamps, which means dinosaurs. Entertaining, unscientific, and dead wrong.

 

[archipeppe]

More interesting, less scientific. Hypothesize all you want, all that's really going to matte is what's really there. For years the hypothesis was that Venus was populated by dinosaurs. The logic was simple... Venus is covered in white clouds, which means lots of water vapor, which - coupled with being closer to the sun - means Venus is hot and wet, which means swamps, which means dinosaurs. Entertaining, unscientific, and dead wrong.

I quote Scott's think word by word....

 

[airman]

Extraterrestrial life? There are
Ufo ? There are but could be been terrestrial X-planes
I have more doubts about Ufo like Extraterrestrial machines and about Abductions !
So could be interesting be abducted by extraterrestrial girl !!! ;D ;D

 

[Stargazer]

Erm... : If she is like the tall Martian lady in Mars Attacks, I think NOT! ;D

 

[Justo Miranda]

Our sense of ethics tells us that the guy with the spear has the same right to be in the airplane than its builder, Geoffrey de Havilland.
Experience, however, tells us that this could eventually turn into a security problem.
Both views are unfair and the surviving of civilization depends upon an intelligent balance between the two.
Sources
-Jane's 1938
-British aerospace

 

[Panzerknacker]

I believe in abductions and cattle mutilations, I am not really sure those are outer space but there are several and real extraordinary forces, I ve seen enough evidence of that.

 

[Orionblamblam]

I believe in abductions and cattle mutilations, I am not really sure those are outer space but there are several and real extraordinary forces, I ve seen enough evidence of that.

Yes, psychological aberations, sleep paralysis and coyotes are extraordinary forces.

Oy.

:

 

[Panzerknacker]

There are no coyotes in Argentina and psychological aberations, sleep paralysis cannot mutilate 2000 cows in a single year.

 

[Stargazer]

Ritual sacrifices are unfortunately very much alive, be it in animist religions, voodoo or the highest ranks of many secret societies. What lengths some can go to perform what they believe is a just worship of their deity is anyone's guess.

 

[Orionblamblam]

There are no coyotes in Argentina and psychological aberations, sleep paralysis cannot mutilate 2000 cows in a single year.

No, but the psychologically aberant *could* mutilate cows, and the psychologically aberant could easily see a perfectly normal dead cow that has been gnawed upon by bugs and other critters as being a Sign From Above.

Aliens and the supernatural *might* exist on Earth. But the crazy and the credulous *do* exist on Earth, in vast abundance.

If someone wants to prove the existence of aliens, they need to do better than showng the existence of the merely unusual.

 

[Dreamfighter]

On this side of the Atlantic I've never heard an inhabitant claim to have been abducted by (an) alien(s), unless his/her parents are divorced.
Most usually an abducter here turns out not to be an alien but a well known neighbour. The ones who get mutilated are usually young human victims.
And crop circles are usually politicians (not) thinking.

 

[quellish]

I am with Michel Van on the Belgian UFO wave. I blame you forum members out there for not digging hard enough. Its some recon craft that you guys haven't sniffed out yet.....

...because there are many things to observe.... in Belgium.