My opinion on most of the abductions: a coping mechanism many people use for bad childhood experiences that were shuffled to the subconscious that now have an outlet that does not point the finger at the person that did interfare?

Our position in the galaxy: We may well be in the prime life zone where Nova and other interactions of closer stars don't upset the systems orbit around the galaxy to much. But one theory is that every 30 million years or so a perturbation in our orbit upsets the oort cloud and shakes things up a bit driving evolution by clearing the board at reasonably regular intervals. Maybe this would be worth study if you were a space faring race.

A left field suggestion on UFO's. If they did exist most people assume that they are space craft holding aliens? But what about probes? Things that move though time - from our future, our science is still very young? Things that move through dimensions - differing realities? My main point being there is a sea of 'real' knowledge and I think we as a race have only just wet our feet.

As for the "alien conspiracy take over nutters" my opinion is that any race able to travel between stars would have given up competing and waring. Competition is an early driver to succeed but to travel between stars I assume most races would need long peaceful times to develop interstellar space technology. After many generations war and aggression would breed and condition out of a race and become socially unacceptable. We protest wars now: public opinion can stop them now. If a race developed technology to get between stars they would probably be above competing for resources etc. For example if a race had the ability to change matter to energy and energy to matter they would find stars and gas giants (-matter pools-) more use than already occupied planets such as Earth with all its problems.

Given the number of stars and galaxies and the age of the universe I think that there could be many life hosting planets around. BUT I'm not convinced that a practical technology to travel between stars is possible without a very long flight time? Even a massive amount of antimatter fuel would take years to get an interstellar probe a few light years away. Sleeper ships maybe? Robot ships with genetic librarys? Engineered space beings/ships?

Earth is 4.5 billion years old, = 4500,000,000 years
We became complex life say 49,000 years ago,
Now we have the technology to destroy the worlds population with rapid jet transport of disease, pandemic or man made virus. Add to that conventional weapons, atomic weapons and genetic warfare. I'll be generous and give us another 1000 years before our race ends. Thats 50,000 years of humans in 4500,000,000 years = 1/90,000th of the Earths time we have been here.

Now based on life being so common that every planet developes sophistocated life at some stage, and using Earth as an example any race visiting Earth would have a very low %age chance of being here at the life time. Where I am going here is that a race just starting space travel would probably be of great interest to other races. Lets say we have a 1000 years to get it together "mature" and become interstellar OR war/evolve?/stagnate and die on our one little home planet.

Maybe it is a pet subject of mine but as I see it we are at the point that populations are so high that random disease could wipe us out, we could wipe ourselves out, yet we are also at a stage that moving money to space/energy/medical sciences we should be able to spread our eggs to more than one basket and cope with most such problems.

I'd expect that we have been visited rarely by stealth probes, but if they were common then more evidence and social knowlegde of them would exist and legends involving UFO's and aliens would be stronger.

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<span style='font-size:10pt;line-height:100%'><span style='color:blue'>If Time is what keeps everything from happening at Once, and if Space is what keeps everything from happening in the same Place then can Imagination bring it all together</span></span><span style='font-size:11pt;line-height:100%'> - Calibre</span>

Okay, I am going back to the first post.

I do believe that there is intelligent life out there somewhere, whether or not they have visited earth is a different story.

The so-called alien cave drawings are NOT aliens. Nor were the pyramids in Mexico or the Nazca drawings draw by aliens or made for aliens . That was a story that was made up by people who could not believe that another culture could be superior enough to build or make such things. Unfornately a movie was made to perpetuate the theory so it lives on. You can look at a lot of drawings, rock formations and buildings and make up any story for it. Anyone remember the face on Mars?



Although I think we are not alone, I do think that it would be incredibly difficult for other intelligent life to visit us. And, if some intelligent life was within "striking" distance, the first transmission they would hear from us would probably be "I love Lucy". That would probably scare them away.

Complex life usually means multi-celled life; and the appearance of such life is identified with the Cambrian geologic period about 545 million years ago. Our own species evolved about 150 thousand years ago. Hominid species have generally lasted a few million years, which would suggest that our species will continue for more than a million years.

Hominid species have been succeeded by other related species that have engaged a greater and greater use of technology and symbolic manipulation. The record of the past does not come close to suggesting a demise of technology using symbol manipulators from the Earth.

It seems to me that predicting something will happen that’s never happened before is a very uncertain undertaking. If one were to predict that it will rain tomorrow: well, rain has happened a lot; we’ve got lots of data and theory; that is voluminous observations and explanations of how those observations came to be. And weather theories are tested every day.

I would opine that human society is incredibly more complex that weather systems. Speculations that lead to unique occurrences in human society probably don’t have much basis.

I don’t think your “pet subject” has any validity at all. The higher the absolute number of individuals in a species, the greater their chance of survival, holding genetic diversity constant. There’s no indication that humans have experienced a decline in genetic diversity; quite the opposite. As almost a tautology, species with low absolute numbers of individuals are less likely to survive. It seems to me that should be very obvious.

When has a species ever disappeared, in nature, as a consequence of large numbers of individuals? I think no such instance is known.

I think one of the first things broadcast was Hilter's speech opening the Olympic games in Germany. Now ain't that scary?

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Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein

Not really trying to say we will be wiped out: but it is a risk. As in we could develope space technology or keep giving the biggest budget to our military. Some threats could well be avoided by heading for the stars, while the military option keeps status quo. Politically it is safer and no big technological changes would reorder society, wealth structures or global dominance of certain economies. Move that money to science and technology and nations would boom and bust along with booms and busts as various nations gain and loose advantages depending on what resources they have to tap the new technologies which would likely change quickly. Meaning resources such as labour, skills and materials would go in and out of vouge quicker as developement progressed.

When has a species on this planet ever had enough scientific knowledge to create biological weapons, chemical weapons, genetic weapons or even atomic weapons?

Add to that 6 Billion people and an increasing population. Common germs are getting tougher and some disease and virus mutate as they spread, some even cross over between species. Mad cow disease is simply a protein that crosses species, it teaches emzymes a new fatal way to build proteins in the brain. Mad cow was blamed on increasing herd population. The mutation that caused the population was called a one in a million chance, but there are many millions of cattle. My drive is that greater population can lead to more new disease strains, and a very bad one would be highly infectious, fatal but incubate slow enough that hosts would spread it befor becoming i'll and the strain becoming known.

I'm not saying this will happen, but I am using it as an example of one risk. And there are many other risks. Even given a terrible pandemic some people would surely survive - due isolation or immunity.

Survival of species is not really about the best, because we can't know what comes tomorrow. Really that whole survival of the fittest thing is a bit wrong in that what life does is diversify such that when an extinction or change of climate or conditions occurs there are many options and hopefully most survive. Some will be dead wrong.

Tinaa - yes it is really, and that bubble of broadcast from a bad time will grow around us for who knows how many thousands of years before it spreads to thin to detect?

__________________
<span style='font-size:10pt;line-height:100%'><span style='color:blue'>If Time is what keeps everything from happening at Once, and if Space is what keeps everything from happening in the same Place then can Imagination bring it all together</span></span><span style='font-size:11pt;line-height:100%'> - Calibre</span>

"develope space technology or keep giving the biggest budget to our military"

it's not an either or, well it is to you apparently, which suggest you have limited abilities. space technology is worthless if you can't defend yourself. by far the biggest budget item is social welfare spending, most of which is mandated, with a mandated rate of increase. social welfare spending is a min., of 3x's military. Back less than 5 years ago the gao couldn't decide if Medicare was losing 12 billion or 28 billion per YEAR to fraud and mismanagement the books were so badly kept. plz spare us your use of the military as a whipping boy.

we are as close to knowing everything completely as we are of someone or thing telling us all the knowledge there is.

Calibre,

Glad you’re not really saying we’ll be wiped out. I’m not prepared to go yet.

I don’t understand the reference to military spending in opposition to spending on space. The United States spends less than 5% of its GDP on the military, other nations generally far less, and none of it seems like a compete determinant of the future of our civilization.

Obviously it’s possible Homo Sapiens could become extinct; it’s not only possible, it’s as certain as death. About 99% of all species that we know about are extinct. No hominid species has lasted more than a few million years at most.

But, I don’t think, any species in nature has ever succumbed to overpopulation. Not ever.

Shifting to mad cow disease, the scenario there would be that we would be wiped out, not by too many people, but by too many cows. I think this is actually as ridiculous as it sounds, but would add that mad cow is an extremely rare disease; even in the most extreme cases affecting less than one in a million people per year. Your chances of being killed by lightning are certainly greater—maybe depending on where you live and what you eat.

Bacteria and viruses have been mutating and crossing species for a very long time—at least hun-dreds of millions of years. And only in the last century have we had medical science to defend us. Far fewer people die of infections today than ever in the story of our species. Follow the trend.

“Add to that 6 Billion people and an increasing population.” If this had any validity, wouldn’t it suggest that areas of high population density would have higher disease rates and lower life ex-pectancy? Empirically, exactly the opposite is the case.

Bob

This is a bit of a random comment, however, I would like to have my say in this topic.

I believe that the only way we can have some sort of idea whether there is life out there is by looking to see if there is any movement in the night sky.

We can't have any idea what so ever if "alien's have invaded" because, who are we to know what aliens actually look like!

:huh:

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Science is wonderfully equipped to answer the question &quot;How?&quot; but it gets terribly confused when you ask the question &quot;Why?&quot;
Erwin Chargaff

Or are we the invaders?...discuss

sarahnade_me in texas having an Xfiles moment

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frijole cabesa

Do you mean "are we the invaders on earth" or "in space"?

Well, if you meant in space I could see your point that we are some sort of invaders, but then again, I see it more as exploring more than invading though. Then again, we seem to be looking for life on planets out of our solar system, and if we finally found life there, would we "invade"?

That is an interesting question and I think it'll be interesting to see other people's views on it!

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Science is wonderfully equipped to answer the question &quot;How?&quot; but it gets terribly confused when you ask the question &quot;Why?&quot;
Erwin Chargaff

No!!! Not in a military sense. That wouldn't work if their civilization were on par with ours. However, we'd probably go there (could be called a passive invasion) and invite them to come here. If their development were where ours was 100,000 years ago or earlier, we would colonize and "benevolently guide" them to our level of technology and social development. If there were no obvious sentients, we would develop it to our liking provided those microbes would permit it.

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For those inclined to oppose human meddling with the structure of the universe or the composition and configuration of objects and groups of objects within the universe, consider:
Whether there is a limit to the magnitude of a modulation of chaos below which order remains invariant? Or, is order but a fiction invented by perspectives applied over finite, however large, time intervals?

I see - we wouldn't invade in a military sense.

I'm going to pick up on what you said about colonization except in a different sense. Would anyone here support a colonization to the moon or Mars or find it remotely interesting or possible?

__________________
Science is wonderfully equipped to answer the question &quot;How?&quot; but it gets terribly confused when you ask the question &quot;Why?&quot;
Erwin Chargaff

Definately possible. Not in OUR lifetime of course. We kind of already started our habitation of mars. it has a satellite and to automated beings on it right now. and I don't know if i meant if we were invader of space or earth I was just having a moment. but there are people who DO believe that we come from space...not here.

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frijole cabesa

Sorry, but that's a generalization. You might as well say they all wear red too as have the same mental state. And how else would someone talk about something that happened to them, than as if they'd actually experienced it?

Most people who talk about having seen a UFO probably do seem sad, depressed, or lonely though. The "sane" ones keep their mouth shut rather than have people laugh at them and think they're nuts.

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Solar Storm Monitor

The further I get from the things I care about, the less I care about how much further away I get.

Most of what I've seen here could not be argued with..ie; No proof.
I will not dismiss the posabilaty that earth was at some time visated. It is posable, just not likly. The size of the universe ond the time line seem to almost prohibat it.. mark.

That is perfectly true - and very scary!

I was talking about that with someone a while ago - out in space somewhere you can probably still faintly here the old man's voice due to the radio wave - who knows perhaps some other life form somewhere might have heard it!

__________________
Science is wonderfully equipped to answer the question &quot;How?&quot; but it gets terribly confused when you ask the question &quot;Why?&quot;
Erwin Chargaff

Our contrabution is small. To hear our feble radio broadcasts a alian spiec., would need to be looking in this direction and within the distance those signals would have traveled as yet. In order to find us.. they need to want to. they need the technolagy to do it. Can we amagine what we might find...No we cant. We can speculate untill dawn. doesént mean a thing. They could have come zooming past our little blue dot. recorded our igsistance, rolled about laphing and left...I think we are being paranoide. We might be the only life form that cares to wonder what.
We are still very primative. We could be concidered to unstable to contact. there are many who still practice religiose beliefs that could only be discribed as finaticle.
The science driven minds are few. reason seems to go out the window when religiose belief steps up to the plate. We are unstable, Dangerous. And untill we change we might never find ET...they might just be ignoring us... like the Ants in the garden.

"like the Ants in the garden"

Humans don't ignore ants, in the garden or anywhere else. We have been studing ants in very great detail over very extended periods of time--thousands of years. Thousands of people have devoted entire careers to the study of ants.

Will advanced ETs be any less curious?

I think it's quite possible that we have been visited before. Not only do I think we've been visited, I believe that we are also being watched regularly. Now, whether there has actually been any physical contact between aliens and us, as the the UFOists like to declare often <_< , is a different story, as there would just be too many variables in accomplishing that task, this may take a while.

In the area of communication, there are three ways (so far) that I know of, to send a messege to someone else.........sight, sound, and touch. And each of these ways can be as simple, or, as sophisticated as the person, and/or thing, wants it to be. It's up to what ever it is on the receiving end to have enough knowledge about how to go about intercepting a potential incoming transmission, that the messege will be read.

Now, I would think that THE best possible, fastest, way to send a messege out to someone else , from an enormous distance, would be via a light source, since it is the fastest moving thing ( I could be wrong) :huh: . At the closest distance, it would be through touch. And where sound is involved, it could possibly be from a medium distance. A combination of these, would make things more interesting in getting information from one part of the universe, to the other. Though I would bet, that the likelyhood of us finally finding what these messeges are, will be found through observation of the night sky.........as stars are twinkling (blinking), some glowing brighter than others, patterns are there..........as well as some other things that might be detectable when the surrounding area of the observer is consumed in darkness.

A side Note:

As a child, I once had a pair of binoculars, and I would become fascinated in observing various, not too distant, things in the immediate area of my neighborhood, and yes, these included girls. :P I had a thought one day about what would happen if I were to take two pairs of binoculars, and hold them end-to-end......I would be able to see things at an even further distance, up closer........I was right, but there was no way for me to get the image I wanted to observe, focused............it was too close, and blurred. So, I had been thinking just recently, why hasn't this sort of thing been done with our current technology today. I would l