Why would survival be a problem, if you have good enough technology to take a large asteroid, and mine out rooms for facilities inside it. Then accelerate/decelerate it at 1G (or whatever your homeworld gravity is) and you'll have a nice artificial gravity as well.

Cloning doesn't solve anything. You can solve any of the problems without cloning. You're just grasping for straws trying to make up reasons.

No you haven't, I checked. You have made up a reason for conquest, but not a reason for the way of the conquest. Now how about you explain why a race coming from far away would be so scared of just having mankind surrender, and take what they want from earth, compared to "conquest" in the way of abducting people and building underground bases.


Translation: I have no idea, I'm just making this up as we go.

They don`t even need to conquest and causing the risk of nuclear reply from us wich can irradiate their live stock...they already have all they need via the abductions.
You have definitively not reading this ...you should.
http://www.humanunderground.com/archive/mj12.html

Hmm...is this thread still on topic? :-k

I find it interesting that this thread has grown so fast—the subject certainly inspires a lot of adversarial debate and exploration of fringe ideas. Which seem like a very good thing. Because even though the subject isn’t accepted as ‘good science’ for various reasons (at least not yet, anyway), it moves people to investigate scientific ideas and to ‘think outside the box.’ I know from personal experience that my sighting experience has motivated years of inquiry into physics and astronomy with an open and insatiably curious mind. It changed me (for the better, I hope) 8-[

Maybe that’s reason enough to address the topic of the potential of extraterrestrial life, and specifically the prospect of visitations, with greater scientific rigor than ever before—because as long as the question remains, young minds will be spurred to learn about and investigate a wide range of scientific fields with an eye toward constructive speculation.

That’s why I think that if there is a ‘they’ taunting us with glimpses of possibilities beyond our present technological reach, they’re doing us a favor. And maybe, just maybe, they’re demonstrating for us the clues we need to discover a new form of propulsion—one that will allow us to get out there and meet our galactic neighbors on their turf…

Then they should have thought things over BEFORE they demonstrated us the wonderfull world of fuzzy handycam filming

Seriously, I don't think so. It is a bit playing with fire, doing peek-a-boo with your fancy spaceship. They can never know just how we might react to that. I think they would just decide not to come at all, or to come and show themselves full front. Besides, seeing glimpses of a craft going very fast will not bring me 1 step closer to building one, except for the certainty that it is possible. It seems like a very inefficient method to teach us to me.

Just my 2 cents.

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so, can we at least agree that the possibility of these beings being closer to us, maybe closer than Proxima Centauri, maybe even on our kuiper belt doing some mining on Sedna, solves the problem of large distance traveling and even explains the small size of their ships?

as for reasons for their presence... i have debated with myself the possible reasons. now, what im going to hint at next is highly debatable but in my mind makes a certain sense. the Book of Enoch describes the voyage of the prophet into "gods" spaceship on heaven. while in there he is given a tour of the place. later he is presented at what to me is a disturbing sight, the Angels apparently collect the souls of humans after they die in large mettalic cillinders. they say the reason is to present "judgement" on humans for their sins after they die. but could there be a more macabre reason behind their actions. i'll try and post the relevant passages here later so as to give a context for this idea.

Well, there's also the possibilty of a nearby mothership rather than a local base, and also the beguiling possibility that their technology allows them to fly several light years with only brief subjective flight times.

Well, I think that knowing something is possible is a big help, especially in this case, since, if we take the best reports at face value, these things seem to violate conservation of momentum, among other laws we hold sacred. So we probably wouldn't even attempt such a thing, if we didn't see an example of a physics 'loop-hole' of some kind that permits this behavior.

And I can see wisdom in the idea that a demonstration to individuals is one thing, and 'irrefutable proof' or schematics, is another--the latter is a huge responsibility, culturally. By leaving it up to individuals to figure the operating principles out for themselves, you don't precipitate the same level of culture shock that something more consensually convincing would entail.

How does a fast moving spaceship in our atmosphere violates any physical law? With enough thrust in all directions, and a skin capable of withstanding enormous heat, it seems to me that lightspeed is the physical boundary. Acceleration/decelleration can be enormous, but does not violate any law. Am I missing physical boundaries in this reasoning?

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Why would they? We'll figure it out ourselves sooner or later. As I asked before, what could they possibly gain from this. What's on earth that can't be found elsewhere? Liposuction? Makeup?

People have come up with complex things on their own, it doesn't take an outside influence. If this was true, where did the first ever intelligent race get their inspiration from? God?

I've heard this reasoning before, basically you're saying we couldn't possibly do it on our own, so we need a outside influence. Just because *you* don't know how to, doesn't mean other people can't figure it out.
Silly reasoning if you ask me.

Possibility? Sure. There's a 1^-5060990 (or any insanely large random number) chance. So yes, I agree, there is a possibility. Doesn't make it true, doesn't say it will ever happen, but yes, the possibility is there.

Mmmm, purple space shrimp...*drool*

As for gods, angels, sins, judgement, you're getting into religion. Stick to science, no need to involve religion into this subject.

Yes we would. We just need to be able to attempt it. There's always someone crazy enough to try something new, putting their life on the line, to figure out if it's possible or not. Breaking the speed of sound by airplane for example.

No. The crew just has to be able to withstand the acceleration/deceleration.

That 's what I thought. The requirements on ship and crew support might be big, but it does not open our eyes into a whole new world of physics.

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Yes--if you take the most compelling reports at face value.

For one thing, they appear to emit no propellant. So it seems that they violate conservation of momentum. We currently have no physics model that would explain how these things can hover and rapidly accelerate without emitting propellant, because we rely on action/reaction for thrust.

Also, they appear to jump to high velocity without an acceleration period. They also stop on a dime, and, they execute zigzag maneuvers without slowing, or curving their trajectories. In short, they appear to defy their own inertial mass, which by current physics standards is impossible.

These are, in my estimation, the aspects that witnesses find most riveting and haunting, because no device we've ever created has these performance characteristics. It's impossible to forget something like this, because it 'should be' impossible for it to happen at all.

This is why I often entertain the hologram interpretation---because a projection could easily behave in this manner. But for a massive object to do so requires a couple of new chapters in the physics books.

The point made was--we wouldn't look very hard for a way around seemingly inviolable physical laws unless we entertained the possibility that it could be done. So by showing us that it can be done, they could be helping us save centuries toward that objective.

Why would they bother? I like to think it would be because they want to help us get out there. And maybe aspects of the science they utilize could have additional benefits for mankind, like the energy crisis. Or maybe they generally encourage civilizations to become star faring because it makes the galaxy a more interesting place? Or maybe because if they give us a slight nudge in the right direction now, we'll have a better basis to establish cooperative relations in the inevitable future when we get out there among them. Or maybe the see the distinct possibility that we may wipe ourselves out soon, and want to spare our species extinction by getting some of us off the planet before we go up in smoke. Or maybe they've seen species in our situation before, and know that we'll have a better chance of pulling our act together if we can migrate into the galaxy and meet our neighbors as equals, more or less. Lots of possibilities, but they all seem benevolent.

Let's be reasonable even if we are being wildly speculative. It takes longer to make something happen if you don't know what you're after, in this case, a propellantless propulsion principle that may also entail some influence on the behavior of mass itself. Given current physics, this isn’t the kind of thing we're likely to investigate if we didn’t hear rumors that it can be done. Sure, eventually, we'd probably get there anyway--which is why a little subtle interference doesn't violate our technological evolutionary process and impose an outside will upon our development, to any radical degree anyway. But maybe getting there sooner rather than later has some significant upsides. I know that I, and everyone on this board, would love to see some radical advance in propulsion technology happen in their lifetimes. It may also involve the solution to other problems as well.

The current situation indicates differently, for the most part (and as for the rest, it may be creditable to our flying disc buddies for putting us on track, hypothetically-speaking). The only scientifically accepted investigation that I know of, to explore revolutionary new forms of propulsion, was NASA's dearly departed Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Program. Which, probably for the very reason that we still regard effective propellantless propulsion systems to be impossible, was woefully under-funded and short-lived.

This is a bad example, because we didn't think it was contrary to the laws of physics to break the 'sound barrier,' just that the sonic shockwave would be life threatening to the pilot/crew.

In fact we DID. Subsonic aerodynamics predict infinite drag at the speed of sound. Hence the name sound "barrier". The idea that these laws lost their validity at transsonic speeds wasn't proven. Only after experiments it turned out that the sound barrier was in fact just a drag rise. Afterwards, theory was adapted to this new findings.

Do you SEE acceleration of a bullet? Do you SEE wind blowing? If a jet engine would be sound dampened and using no afterburner, do you SEE something being expelled? I have never seen fuel being expelled from a non-afterburning jet engine on airshows. IF a 747 does not make contrails due to atmospheric conditions, I see absolutely no propellant being expelled, eventhough it uses a LOT of it. I do realise the difficulties of making a craft like that, but very fast acceleration and decelleration does not brake any law, given that you can provide enough thrust to allow for such a change.

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I don't SEE what wind blowing has to do with it. And I may not be able to watch the bullet accelerate, but there's an obvious explosion to explain the force. These craft, if that's what they are, change vector with no apparent slowing or curving, and no visible or audible indication of propulsion method. Do you see the challenge to physics here? Your questions don't address the questions at hand--if we take these cases at face value, we don't have the physics to explain them. I suspect that we're somehow asking the wrong questions, because the answers are not forthcoming.

edit: Also, no reports I've ever read or heard of have indicated air flow associated with these craft. They don't make wind and they don't expel propellant. It's a true physics conundrum--if the accounts are accurate.

What wind blowing has to do with it:
http://www.globalcomposites.com/jec/upl/helios.jpg
this.

No propellant is being expelled. Stil, thrust is generated by the action/reaction principle: the propellors blowing wind from front to back.

A bullet has an explosion related to it, that's true. But no physical law limits the size of an acceleration. The bullet was just an example of very fast acceleration, so fast that you can't see it with your eyes. The fact that you don't know how a spaceship obtains its acceleration, does not mean it breaks physical laws. If I hit a baseball with a bat, it changes direction almost instantaneously, so these kind of changes are physically possible. We just don't see how it happens.

An example that combines wind blowing and seeing acceleration (a bit of a bad example because it is too slow in fact, but anyway). I let go a balloon, it slowly ascends. Suddenly, a there is a small hole in the side. The balloon "instantaneously" changes direction, with no propellant seen expelled.

What I want to say: the amount of acceleration is no problem to physical laws. That we don't know how they are achieved is no problem to physical laws.

All this is of course assuming that ETs would visit us and that their craft would exhibit that kind of behaviour.

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Take NC More's sighting, for example, which is similar to many others. Here's a large metallic object hovering over the ground for some 20-25 minutes. It would have to be displacing its weight in air if we're going to accept the aerodynamic concept you're forwarding, but in none of these cases has anyone ever seen the trees/grass below, blowing or moving in any way.

And I don't think any of the cases I've encountered describe venturi's or ports from which air could blow--they're always described as smooth, ventless objects. They also often move in directions at some angle to the ground, which would require ports on the bottom and the side, neither of which are visible.

So it would seem that the only idea we have to explain this, air/gas flow, is out. And that leaves us with, well, nothing to explain how these things hover and move. I think this is a key reason why scientists abhor the whole subject--because we don't have a good explanation for what these things are described as doing.