Anomalous Aerial phenomena

Tea Drinker
Don
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I think it's worrying the world isn't full of aliens. Either space travel is doomed or we are in a zoo.

14 billion years and 40 billion planets in the goldilocks zone and we're no wiser to if there's anyone out there.
 
Caporegime
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I think it's worrying the world isn't full of aliens. Either space travel is doomed or we are in a zoo.

14 billion years and 40 billion planets in the goldilocks zone and we're no wiser to if there's anyone out there.

You watch the Orville? Episode 2 covers your suspicions (excellent show btw, well worth a watch, takes a few episodes to get up to speed):

 
Soldato
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I think it's worrying the world isn't full of aliens. Either space travel is doomed or we are in a zoo.

14 billion years and 40 billion planets in the goldilocks zone and we're no wiser to if there's anyone out there.

Or, they are here and they're just too alien for us to recognise as such.

I read an article some years back by an astrophysicist where he raised the possibility that, due to their advanced level of technology, alien races would explore and gather information on other inhabited planets via nano-machines rather than buzzing around the skies in easily visible 'flying saucers'.
 
Soldato
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The 'Anomalous Aerial Vehicle' was of unknown origin and represented technology not currently in the possession of the U.S. or any other nation

Remember when Area51 didn't exist too ? :rolleyes:

Unfortunately the Tic Tac incident has ties to Tom Delonge, so I doubt what we're being told holds a candle to actual reality
 
Associate
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Listen alien believers (local ones), it is most likely there isn't actually a way to cheat the speed of light which seems most plausible.

The distances involved between stars is unworkable for travel.

Lets say we have a star which is 20,000 light years away. The equivalent of our doorstep in universe terms.
Say this star harbours super intelligent life that can travel 99.9% speed of light.

If these aliens decided to plot course to Earth the following applies.
We earthlings here today, won't greet our alien visitors until >20,000 years from now.
The actual aliens on this spaceship would have to wait themselves approx 282 years to complete the journey. (Due to time dilation, a lot less than 20,000 years, but still way too long).

This is why we don't have aliens flying around today.

Do your own calculations here.
http://www.emc2-explained.info/Dilation-Calc/#.XEjh3lz7SUk
 
Man of Honour
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I think it's worrying the world isn't full of aliens. Either space travel is doomed or we are in a zoo.

14 billion years and 40 billion planets in the goldilocks zone and we're no wiser to if there's anyone out there.

I don't think it's that extreme.

Imagine a civilisation with such advanced magic/technology that they can explore interstellar and even intergalactic distances in realtime. For some reason, they have an enduring wish to explore the universe and they assign a lot of resources to this mission. They're so committed that they explore a million complete star systems every year, year after year! It would take them in the region of 10,000,000,000,000,000 years to explore the universe. Which is almost a million times as long as the universe has existed for and probably more than a million times as long as any civilisation could have existed for.

But it's worse than that because in order to find us not only would they have to have explored here, they would have to have done it recently. What if they did explore here, but it was 5 billion years ago? Our star system didn't exist then, let alone any life in it.

They might be narrowing the search to planets they think might have life on them...but what criteria would they be using for that? Extremophiles on Earth have shown us that the requirements for life are broader than we initially thought. Maybe they're broader still. Maybe a hypothetical hyper-advanced civilisation has narrowed their search to quite difference conditions to Earth because the conditions they live in are quite different to Earth. Even if they were narrowing their search to planets that might contain liquid water, they'd still have to scan a vast number of star systems at vast distances just to start that narrowing down process.

They might be scanning for potentially artificial signals of some sort, but even if they are then they might not recognise the waste emissions from Earth as artificial or they might be more than dozens of light years away so even the faintest remnants wouldn't have reached them from here yet or they might not be pointing their detectors in this direction.

They might just not care. We're curious about the possibility of other people elsewhere, but that doesn't mean that they would be if they exist.

I think there's plenty of scope for other people elsewhere and with space travel and without us knowing about them or them knowing about us. As Douglas Adams put it, space is big.
 
Man of Honour
Joined
13 Oct 2006
Posts
91,141
Listen alien believers (local ones), it is most likely there isn't actually a way to cheat the speed of light which seems most plausible.

The distances involved between stars is unworkable for travel.

Lets say we have a star which is 20,000 light years away. The equivalent of our doorstep in universe terms.
Say this star harbours super intelligent life that can travel 99.9% speed of light.

If these aliens decided to plot course to Earth the following applies.
We earthlings here today, won't greet our alien visitors until >20,000 years from now.
The actual aliens on this spaceship would have to wait themselves approx 282 years to complete the journey. (Due to time dilation, a lot less than 20,000 years, but still way too long).

This is why we don't have aliens flying around today.

Do your own calculations here.
http://www.emc2-explained.info/Dilation-Calc/#.XEjh3lz7SUk

There is a theoretical method ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgpVe2G9ByE ) that allows you to potentially bring down the time passed from the perspective of traveller by significant amounts.
 
Caporegime
Joined
24 Oct 2012
Posts
25,060
Location
Godalming
Listen alien believers (local ones), it is most likely there isn't actually a way to cheat the speed of light which seems most plausible.

The distances involved between stars is unworkable for travel.

Lets say we have a star which is 20,000 light years away. The equivalent of our doorstep in universe terms.
Say this star harbours super intelligent life that can travel 99.9% speed of light.

If these aliens decided to plot course to Earth the following applies.
We earthlings here today, won't greet our alien visitors until >20,000 years from now.
The actual aliens on this spaceship would have to wait themselves approx 282 years to complete the journey. (Due to time dilation, a lot less than 20,000 years, but still way too long).

This is why we don't have aliens flying around today.

Do your own calculations here.
http://www.emc2-explained.info/Dilation-Calc/#.XEjh3lz7SUk


Pah, travel schmavel. Event Horizon.
 
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