The Pseudoscience of UFOs

[Dagobahn Eagle]

Swamp gas, and stupid people. There's your explanation.

Of the Hessdalen lights, edlib's anal probes, the government cover-ups, or all three;)?

 

Just for your information, there's not exactly an abundance of swamps in Norway:p.

[Samnmax221]

Forget to mention natural phenomen, and people who feel a constant need for attention.

 

Besides Peet Bogs are quite similiar to swamps and you do have those

[Dagobahn Eagle]

I didn't say they weren't natural, I said we have no clue as to what they are. Or why they apparently only happen in that valley.

 

And some of them occur too high up to be bog lights. Or, of course, they happen away from bogs.

[Kurgan]

The great interstellar distances they'd have to travel to get here would seem to rule out extraterrestrial visitation. I would think if they really existed and had such technology, they'd have been here a long time ago, and we couldn't ignore their presence.

 

It might be comforting to believe the US government is hiding them, but the enemies of the US would surely use this against them if that information really existed. Why hasn't China announce the "aliens"? Or Al Qaeda? Or some whistleblowers from the Bush administration? It just doesn't add up.

 

The Defense Department or at least the Air Force had that "project bluebook" thing which I remember reading about, but you could always chalk that up to investigating phenomena (remember how much money the military wasted investigating psychic phenomena and testing drugs on troops) or a great cover for watching for spy satellites and experimental aircraft (the Stealth Bomber/Fighter were reguarly mistaken for "alien craft" by UFO enthusiasts for example).

 

Personally I admit the possibility of extraterrestrial life. My sense of wonder hopes they exist. But I also have to face the fact that if they exist they are probably too far away or too primitive/different from us, to ever make contact possible... except in the far far flung future (if at all). By the time we get there (or they get here) the other may be long gone.

 

So save it for the sci fi writers. I don't think we're being visited by little green men. The phenomena we hear about is easily explained away as hoaxes, and misidentified objects in the skies.

[Dagobahn Eagle]

The great interstellar distances they'd have to travel to get here would seem to rule out extraterrestrial visitation. I would think if they really existed and had such technology, they'd have been here a long time ago, and we couldn't ignore their presence.

They could, of course, be using wormholes or some other advanced technology. Just nit-picking.

 

But no, there's no evidence we've been visited. It is technically possible that we might have been, but it's never been proven, so there's a fair chance it's a bunch of nonsense.

 

1. 93% of all "UFO footage" has been explained away as hoaxes, as natural phenomena, development artefacts, etc. There's thus a fair chance the remaining 7% won't hold water either.

 

2. As SkinWalker said, footage is decreasing even though camera availability is increasing. You could argue that "oh, it doesn't prove them wrong, it just means they're visiting us less or getting better at hiding", but I'm not convinced.

 

3. My favourite: The first person to "see a UFO" said it flew "like a saucer would if you skipped it across water". Subsequent "UFO sightings", due to a communication breakdown, were described as "saucer-shaped aircraft".

 

It's like me being out in the woods describing a fox as ferocious as a bear (let's blame rabies), and people going "yeah, I saw this fox that looked like a bear, too!", "it was gigantic!", "it shone like a candle", etc.

 

But of course, there just happen to be two craft. One flies like a saucer, one looks like a saucer:rolleyes:.

[Dagobahn Eagle]

Something I just thought of that I don't know how many people have considered.

 

Maybe primitive life on other worlds doesn’t consist of cells that know how to evolve. As a matter of fact, I’d be very surprised if something like our Earthly biological cells could coincidentally also exist someplace else.

 

Evolution could be a secured patent of Earth that no one else use. I’m not saying no one could ever have come up with a similar system, I’m just saying that no one should take it for granted. It is a pretty advanced and incredible thing, after all, one that certain people even today find too incredible to believe even as it happens right in front of their eyes.

 

If life exist elsewhere, they'd have to make use of some kind of process of evolution, with some kind of DNA-like system. They couldn't just pop into existance as advanced, intelligent beings. And I'm wondering how big the chances are of such things happening that often that it matters, to put it that way.

 

I don't know how much this really contributes, but it just struck me how I've been taking evolution for granted for such a long time:o.

[edlib]

I don't think anyone really takes it for granted. The statement: "The possibility of life elsewhere in the universe" also carries with it: "The very real possibility that there is no other life of any kind in the universe. That WE might just be it!"

 

That's a really sobering thought.

 

The Drake Equation (popularized by Carl Sagan in Cosmos) calculates the odds of intelligent life forming elsewhere in the galaxy, making a few very general (and some might say fairly conservative, while others will say wildly optimistic) assumptions about what it takes for life to form and evolve based on what we know about our own planet and evolution.

 

It seems to point to the possibility that there may be other civilizations that form in our own Galaxy... but it could very well be, if those civilizations exist at all, that they have formed (or have yet to form) at different times, and at distances that would make detection, communication and contact of any type utterly impossible.

[Dagobahn Eagle]

The Drake Equation (popularized by Carl Sagan in Cosmos)

Not that thing again:eek: ()! It was in a popular-science magazine I read, too. Along with an article on it and on various reasons we haven' been contacted except by UFOs and demons yet.

 

The equation, I seem to recall, isn't an absolute thing (as Wiki agrees), and there's a Heck of a controverse as to what the values of the valuables should be (Wiki got that right, too).

 

Huh, I'd be happy with just some micro-organism fossils:).

[edlib]

Yeah, it's hardly "Hard Science"... but statistically speaking, if only one star in a trillion proves capable of producing any life at all, and the same percentage of those can produce intelligent life, that's STILL a significant number when spread out over the entirety of the universe.

[SkinWalker]

From the nutters that told us Noah's Ark was found last month, comes the news that UFOs are related to the Gospel of Christ. What a sad bunch.

 

Drake Equation, eh?

 

Most theoretical speculations about the existence of extraterrestrial life begins with the Drake Equation and the Principle of Mediocrity. The latter states, simply, that we are not special and, not being special, life such as ours must exist elsewhere in the universe.

 

The Drake Equation, however, is more complicated. Nearly every fundamentalist UFOist (the hardcore UFO proponent that pushes his beliefs in extraterrestrials with a religious fervor, ignoring prosaic explanations for even the most spurious UFO events and accepting with blind faith the testimony of fellow believers) uses the Drake Equation in his argument. (I've used the masculine pronoun in my description of UFO proponents twice in this paragraph because they are almost always male). Even middle ground UFO believers and skeptics refer to this equation as evidence of the probable existence of life in other parts of the universe.

 

But what doesn't get discussed is the fact that there are varied opinions as to the final outcome of the equation!

 

Let's start with the equation itself:

 

 

R* = the rate at which stars are formed in our galaxy per year

 

fp = the fraction of stars, once formed, that will have a planetary system

 

ne = the number of planets in each planetary system that will have an environment suitable for life

 

fl = the probability that life will develop on a suitable planet

 

fi = the probability that life will evolve to an intelligent state

 

fc = the probability that intelligent life will develop a culture capable of communication over interstellar distances

 

L= the time (in years) that such a culture will spend actually trying to communicate.

 

Drake himself viewed N as a moderate number: not too large; not too small. His argument was that communication might be possible for a moderate number of civilizations, but they would find colonization and travel expensive endeavors. Regardless of another planet's version of economic means, materials and resources would have to be expended to create ships/technology/energy to move from one place to the next.

 

But what the Drake Equation doesn't cover is travel to other worlds. L[/b], as noted above, refers to the time a capable civilization will spend trying to communicate. Wouldn't actually traveling to another planet of another solar system of, potentially, another galaxy be a whole different equation?

 

I have some other thoughts of the Drake Equation itself, but I'll hold off for now. This just struck me as an interesting topic since it has come up several times in several threads of late.

 

In fact, it might be interesting to discuss each of the factors of the Equation itself in a thread such as this. "The probability that life will develop" at all on a suitable planet is an interesting topic. What about the probability that a given culture of reasonable intelligence might endure the same fallible nature as humanity: competition among each other for prestige, power, etc. that leads to war? This, after all, would be an intuitive characteristic of natural selection/survival of the fittest. What about natural disasters such as volcanoes, asteroid impacts, and disease? Why wouldn't this need to be a subfactor for fi or fc?

 

In the Drake Equation, R* is often considered to be the best understood or easiest to deal with, since we have some solid data regarding the formation of new stars in the universe, how the coalesce from intergalactic clouds of hydrogen, helium, methane, ammonia, dust grains, etc.

 

We also know that only a fraction of these stars will be suitable for providing habitat for intelligent life or, in many cases, any life. The environment of the star itself has to be conducive for forming planets, these planets need to be within certain parameters of temperature and need to be in existence long enough to allow life to evolve, etc.

 

Life is certainly possible, even probable, in extreme environments, but conditions would need to have qualities of stability in order to allow intelligent life to evolve.

 

Current theories are that stars that have 1.4 times our own Sun's solar mass or more have a life cycle that is too short to produce viable planets. There is also an age qualification for stars, the older ones would have difficulty producing planets because of the lack of heavy metals produced in supernovae. These only eliminate about 1% of the stars from the equation to this point, but other factors have to be considered as well.

 

The proliferation of binary systems of stars eliminates more of the total due to continually shifting gravitational stresses, extreme temperature shifts, etc. that interfere with a stable planetary system forming. When we look at the Earth, the stability of the orbit, and the delicate nature of the zone we live it is unique. Otherwise we would note proliferations of life on other Solar worlds (not that it doesn't exist, but remember we're talking about civilizations not simply microbes). Apparently, at least half of the stars that aren't too old or too big belong to binary systems.

 

After including this as well as other factors, like stars that are too small, reside in regions of their galaxy that are deleterious to life -such as near the galactic core, and then R* goes from about 10 stars per year to much, much less. Shklovskii and Sagan (1966) estimated a rate of 10 stars per year, but Rood and Trefil came up with rates between 0.15 per year in the high range, and 0.005 per year in the low range -depending on what criteria was adhered to.

 

The vast majority of stars in the universe present very inhospitable environments to organisms if they have planets at all.

 

References:

 

Dole, S. (1970) Computer Simulation of the Formation of Planetary Systems. Icarus. Vol. 13, pp 494-508.

Hart, M. (1979). Habitable Zones About Main Sequence Stars. Icarus. Vol. 37, pp 351-357.

Rood, R., and Trefil, J. (1981). Are We Alone? The Possibility Of Extraterrestrial Civilizations. New York: Schribner's.

Shklovskii, J., and Sagan, C. (1966). Intelligent Life in the Universe. San Francisco: Holden-Day

[Mike Windu]

I like to think there's other people out there wondering if we exist.

[Tyrion]

I like to think there's other people out there wondering if we exist.

 

There's a few on Earth who believe that we don't exist.

[Dagobahn Eagle]

The vast majority of stars in the universe present very inhospitable environments to organisms if they have planets at all.

Although, of course, what's "very inhospitable" to humans might be "Paradise" to some other life-forms. It's amazing what certain bacteria on this planet survives. Some even survive the vacuum of space, and NASA is sincerely worried, with good reason, about bacteria surviving on space-crafts such as probes landing on other planets (such as Mars) and surviving on the planet.

[DarkStarMojo]

What if we're all just characters in somebody's dream? What happens when he/she wakes up?

 

I'm skeptical about UFOs visiting earth because when you believe something so deeply you can't see the forest through the trees and the only explanation that will ever satisfy you is the one that fits your own beliefs. For a skeptic, if hard, credible evidence came out tomorrow that UFOs exist - like a flying saucer crash-landing on the front lawn of the White House or something - they'd believe it. But for a die-hard believer, none of the government explanations for Roswell will ever suffice unless they say, "Yeah, it was a flying saucer and we did get alien bodies." Same goes for any other so-called conspiracy.

[Samnmax221]

No more Zelda for you

[Dagobahn Eagle]

Paragraphs, friend. Paragraphs;).

 

But to assume that highly intelligent life that can travel seemingly insurmountable distances - which obviously means they have technology beyond anything we could achieve

I'm nitpicking here, but it's related to the topic, and it's interesting, so I'm game.

 

Maybe they created a temporary wormhole behind our Moon or something when arriving and leaving (if they existed, that is). It'd save a lot of travelling time, and we wouldn't see what goes on back there.

 

"It's possible!";).

 

(...) would come here not to announce themselves and make contact in any way, whether for peaceful purposes or invasion and conquest, but to abduct and anal probe people and turn cattle inside out, is totally ridiculous.

 

Technically, these creatures, despite looking like particularly undernourished humans and building flying space-ships that look very Earthly (I mean, look at those photographies, they look very human despite their alien shape), might have a totally different mentality than us, and thus is folly to us makes perfect sense to them.

 

But, of course, I'd assume that they'd make use of some sort of logic like we do.

 

If they're so technologyically advanced to travel between star systems in a managable period of time, why would they make use of such primitive technology as they supposedly use to examine us, rather than some kind of super-advanced X-ray scanner or something? Why would their so-called "mental blocks" be so susceptible to simple hypnosis techniques?

Well, when Cortéz "discovered" the Aztecs, they had stone structures that amazed the Europeans. However, they had not yet invented the wheel.

 

For centuries, different cultures have had different explanations for sleep paralysis. In a modern, techno-centric world where 98% of the public is likely aware of aliens and spaceships and such, the natural conclusion becomes "OMG! Aliens took me onto their spaceship and experimented on me!"

It's the modern version of the old tales of trolls kidnapping you from your home and taking you into their mountain halls - and related themes. It's just UFOs and saucers instead of trolls and caves, and anal-probes instead of whatever the trolls did to you.

 

No more Zelda for you

There are aliens in Zelda:confused:?

()

[DarkStarMojo]

Sorry 'bout the paragraphs. 'Twas late and I was just typing things as they came into my head.

 

Now, I suppose trying to make an intelligent post in a topic that is basically speculation and pretty ridiculous to begin with isn't a good idea. In that case I concede, but it is kinda fun to make up theories that fill in the holes, like filling in holes in the plot of a bad sci-fi movie.

 

No more Zelda for you

 

Never played it. Sorry. The correct response would have been - "No more staying up 'til the crack of dawn after having too much soda, sugar, and pie for you."

[The Source]

Heres somthing interesting:

To the common citizen, we believe that what we see is 'Unidentified'. Why is it that when we ask the government, "Was there a UFO in the sky on the night of August 1, 2002?', and they say, "No. There was no UFO?. Well, it is very simple. They know what it is.

 

Therefore, they never lie. They are telling people the truth. There was no 'Unidentified Flying Object' in the air, for they know exactly what was in the air. It was something they could identify. This also includes unearthly objects. If we have been visited, the government knows who they are. Why? Because they meet them before.

 

Fast-forward...

Forty years after Roswell, you ask the government, "Was there a UFO crash?', and they say, "No.". Since they had twenty-years experience with the damn thing, they can now identify it. Therefore, they know what it is.

 

Get it?

[MeleeMaster]

*Goes To Area 51, breaks in, looks around, then gets attacked by ALIENS!*

 

 

[Mike Windu]

There's a few on Earth who believe that we don't exist.

 

You know why they tell us we can't go past Pluto? because there's a wall there, man, and when we hit it we'll all wake up.

 

Don't even get me started with existentialism, it's so crazy and cool.

 

Nice av/sig btw.

[Kurgan]

*Goes To Area 51, breaks in, looks around, then gets attacked by ALIENS!*

 

 

 

http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?letter=A&game_id=6907

 

Sorry, couldn't resist.

[TK-8252]

*Goes To Area 51, breaks in, looks around, then gets attacked by ALIENS!*

 

 

 

Yeah, maybe illegal aliens.

[MeleeMaster]

Note:The smiley is suppossed to be me and the big hand represents the alien.

[Nancy Allen``]

If there are aliens, and they were able to get here, how would such an advanced race capeable of intersteller travel be caught by us primitive humans? Or why hasn't anymore come looking for who was lost at Roswell or other alien landings and crashes?

[Dagobahn Eagle]

If there are aliens, and they were able to get here, how would such an advanced race capeable of intersteller travel be caught by us primitive humans? Or why hasn't anymore come looking for who was lost at Roswell or other alien landings and crashes?

Right, I can see it now. Zion Centauri bombing Earth to the Hot Place for its two missing pilots. Woe be us:p.