I thought 15 light years was layman's terms.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

"If the U.S government cannot cover up a burglary in a hotel suite, then they probably cannot...."

the watergate case was more a political cover up than a state ones, you cant compare both, the state have many high security data and cover ups, some techs, other politics etc.

that 60s report might be some mistake done by the radio-astronomers, pulsars were widely confused with ET signals, besides im not sure if are pulsars at 15 LYs....but anyway there were other kind of missinterpretations

sayng that if NASA is completelly civiliand -which also isnt the case- means independency is a nosense, the state gives NASA the money, if they find a little green dude on mars..and the state dont want that our green friend become famous, then NASA must say "yes sir!"

besides i find somewhat dangerous that such knowledge would become public...due all the weirdos arround that suddenly will become in erudites..including some new ages crap and religion.. and in general such discovery of an advanced ET specie could bring too much anxiety

This is about as good of an answer anyone can give to the question asked in this thread. Very well said Swift.

Here's a word for you zerocold...
crap
Use some critical thinking. Don't confuse yourself with non sequiturs.
Military secrets are only kept a short time at best and they don't stay secret.
Further, it is usually only technical details that are jealously guarded, not the facts themselves. Example: the whole world knew about the MiG Foxbat. It was its capabilities and specs that were kept secret... for a little while.

And here's a question - if deep space stellar noise has (for a very brief time) been mistaken for alien broadcasts, how is it that you know about it? Surely such things would have been kept secret, according to your philosophy.

Sure NASA receives government funding. The state pays welfare cheques and food stamps, too. Does that buy the unwavering loyalty of the recipients?

I don't even understand your last paragraph but you appear to be spouting the same old nonsense about society not being able to cope with the stress of finding out we are not alone. Rubbish.
I, for one, would welcome it because it would help put paid to nearly every crappy intolerent religion on the planet and finally make all those "man is the pinnacle of creation" fruitcakes shut the hell up.

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This is not an idea to be tossed aside lightly - it should be thrown with great force

Socks may be used as coffee filters. If they are white socks, their use as a coffee filter effectively eliminates the problem with sweat stains.

Sorry I'm so late to this thread. As a PGDA I was in a lengthy subspace conversation with Lrrr of Omicron Persei Eight. It seems he wants more hippies.

Re the OP, sure NASA, the United States government, even Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, could try to cover up a received alien transmission, for whatever reason, including trying to keep humanity from panicking. But the odds of their success in doing so, based on past efforts and their track records, are very small.

Then there's the other aspect of this, which is whether such a cover up policy exists. Having worked in aerospace industries, and known numerous "higher ups" in various related organizations, including NASA, since the 1970s, all the evidence I have personally accumulated indicates that it doesn't. This jibes quite well with all the other information made available by these organizations and their watchdogs over the years.

But if a person has a strong desire, for whatever reason, to be paranoid about such things, then it's likely no amount of verifiable objective evidence will sway that person from their suspicions.

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A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document.

I believe there's an old, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, conspiracy theory that says TV shows like Star Trek and movies like 2001 and Star Wars were produced with government support after (a) contact with aliens and (b) the Brookings report. The idea was to prepare the public psychologically for the eventual disclosure of the aliens' existence.

I only wish it were true. Live long and prosper, Greys!

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Bring back Firefly!

"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)

Yes; There is some truth in that, because without government involvement, they don't have money.
But; this fact works both ways. It takes money for a coverup. To get that money, you are opening up the financial spider web to a lot more people, thus, more exposure, thus, more chances of leaks.
And we don't have that now?
Maybe if they knew ET's intentions, they wouldn't have to make it up, and guess what is expected of them. I seriously doubt ET would cause somebody to wear purple robes and tennis shoes while offering thier own sacrifice.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

occam dont compare a plane with such a discovery like a ET civilization

we could know about these mistakes, of course, because is something that they -whoever are- have something to say that is a wrong signal, a signal that could not be proven false is other matter.

im not sying that we have contacted ETs but i think that is the way how the state will react

"Does that buy the unwavering loyalty of the recipients?"

money is everything

"And we don't have that now?"

just imagine how all these nuts will get power with such discovery...yes are many now...now imagine them ...with power, that problem is a bit more troublesome than u think, ok lets asume that some bigheads cosmic dudes are discovered, then all these idiots will say "i told u!!", but that dont finish there...then they will say "ohh but are more aliens here and there!"...and then "ohhh but im the aliens best friend"...etc..., noone could have anything to say against them because they quickly attack u with that "i told u!!"...so u will have a huge religion/society/state that will be infuenced with that cosmic new age crap

no i dont have any evidence for such a thing

OK. We're clear on that, then.

but then i dont believe in everything that they say well infact most of the things that they say or show us.

By "they", do you mean NASA?

If so, can you give an example or two of something "they" say or show us that you don't believe, and why specifically you don't believe it?

yes you are right that there are many astronomers working for or with nasa even may be some independent astronomers

Er, I think you misread what I wrote. I pointed out that most astronomers don't work for NASA.

but that certainly does not mean that they have access to all the inside things of nasa. i certainly will make sure that an outsider even if he is working for me should know only those things that he/she is supposed to. its logical.

It may seem "logical" to you, but you're not taking into account the way the real astronomical community works, nor the way NASA really works. I've spent quite a bit of time working with both. The highly secretive, highly compartmentalized environments you posit for them is simply a fantasy. The international, highly interconnected working style of astronomers in particular simply does not lend itself to such a cover-up, but really neither does the way NASA and its contractors operate.

One might also point out, as some posters have already done, that the discovery of intelligent extraterrestrial life would be a tremendous boon to a perennially cash-strapped agency. It's simply in NASA's best interest to publicize such a discovery. Remember the hoopla surrounding the alleged fossil life discovered in the Martian meteorite back in the '90s? That was NASA's doing. But you're asking us to give credence to the notion that the agency would act against its own self-interest, based on nothing more than one somewhat panicky article from a half-century ago.

Uh-uh. Ain't buying it.

It's conceivable that a few NASA-sponsored astronomers stumbled onto some evidence for alien life, and it's been hushed up. But it's so extremely unlikely, and uncharacteristic of the way things really work, that there's simply no reason to believe such a thing actually happened without hard evidence. And you have none.

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"Slapping a guy on the head is just as funny now as it was eighty years ago."

That, in itself, can mean there's no way to cover it up. They need to reveal some of what they know to use it to thier advantage.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

Here's a good link for more about listening for alien signals:
http://www.planetary.org/html/UPDATE.../History00.htm
It covers the whole story, including Project Ozma at Green Bank, and the current situation where various privately financed and amateur radio astronomers are leading the field. NASA has been involved in the search, but it is not the only game in town.

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"The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head" Terry Pratchett

"They need to reveal what they know to use it to thier advantage."

your too optimist, isnt about the knowledge you have, lets say, that they reveal some kind of ETs, but dont know how they talk, how is their tech, etc..., then a psico-nut comes and say "i know", haha that will be great, the worls isnt filled by "educated" ppl, the world is more made by desperate ones

if the world would be made mostly by boring rational people...the religions shouldnt exist

That is my point. It can't be kept a secret.

It's all relative. If the world would be made up of boring rational people, then, some things that we consider boring would be the basis for what they consider a wacky religion.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

It may be layman's terms, but I think most people don't have a grasp of how FAR one light year is. We really don't have personal references for anything that large (heh..try comprehending a billion light years).

I know the definition of a light year, but I have difficulty comprehending the vast distance that it represents...

Pete

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PJE

There's so much I don't know about astrophysics. I wish I had read that book by that wheelchair guy.

That would explain why so many of them have opted for a career in sciences and engineering. Now that you mention it, I do remember seeing ads in the professional journals "Engineers, make big money: Deny aliens exist for NASA".

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The views expressed are the febrile product of an overactive imagination of a person who in shadows sees the gyrating Elvis-like ghost of Leonid Brezhnev.

You need to pay more attention to the society you live in. It's already filled with "psico-nuts" who come and say they know what the government is hiding.

If David Icke and Zecheria Sitchin and Erich Von Daniken and Stephen Jones and Dylan Avery and Sylvia Browne and Uri Geller and Bart Sibrel (to name but a few) aren't currently bothering the government at all with their psico-nut claims to know what the government is hiding, why would they bother the government any more with other claims?

Bozola...money give u the tools to hide, is done with all the state-goverment high security data, no matter if u pay ppl to hide it, or just give them more money for their favorite research

stutefish, the states always hides their little nasty secrets, is normal, nothing out of conventional, i dont know about these psicos..-haha is getting funny- u named, i dont care, i mean responsable ppl that knows some nasty secrets wont start that "hey look at me i have the big secret to tell", of course there are ppl that makes money with that crap, but for them is a business, and maybe for some is just zealotry, so most likely are false claims

what im telling you is how most likely would be the things if we discover that there is intelligent life, is impossible to avoid that the posindustrial sci-fi pop culture of modern societies will mess with all that

Ok; this one made me snap, because I have no clue what you are saying.

Could you please spend a little bit of time to speak better to us. I know we all have our issues with language, but I don't see yours as innocent mistakes. This is not an IM system, and I would appreciate a bit of work to make your words intelligible.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

I'm suspecting that we are not dealing with a native speaker. I try to be understanding of that, but I think that, if you are posting in a language you don't speak very well, it behooves you to take extra care to be sure that people know what you're saying. I also think you should let people know, at least in your first post--marking your location as "not an English-speaking country" or something would be a good way to do it, too.

At any rate.

I take government money. Every month. However, I can assure you that the $640 I get from the Social Security Administration is far from enough to ensure my complicity about, well, anything. They literally could not pay me enough, in fact, to get me to lie about history. (Or physics, but I wouldn't be the person you'd pay to lie about physics.) No amount of money is enough, because--in my belief structure--covering up history is one of the greatest sins possible.

Besides, human nature indicates that people talk. People always talk. They say they won't, but they do. Inevitably. Just about every conspiracy that's ever been uncovered has been by someone saying something they shouldn't've to someone they shouldn't've. That's simply how it works, and it always has been. The Earl of Boswell bragged of killing a king in 1567, and Mark Felt talked to Woodward and Bernstein in 1973. Some things do not change, and it's those things that make me doubt your claim, not any faith in the government.

The fact is, were politics not off-limits here, I could tell you a great many things that my government