Sectorseven
Member
What if we discover a planet of super intelligent robots that have long outlived their biological creators, does that count?
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"Aliens" to be found within the next 20 years say astronomers
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t-storm
Member
It depends on what their definition of success is and nobody but them can answer that.
But by my own definition, no we would not be perceived as a success. I don't think the post that mentioned aliens putting a warning beacon out to others to avoid us is too far off. I think they would be sad and pity us because we probably are capable of great things but bound by own simpleton ways that prevent us from moving forward as a race: specific beliefs, greed, pleasure and violence.
D
Deleted member 13876
Unconfirmed Member
It's all about ALF, the Alien Life Form. ALF is cyclical.
DiscoJer
Member
I don't think so.
The galaxy is really, really big, but at the same time, there are only certain places where life would likely survive. Out on the fringes of the galaxy, where we are. Stars have a habit of exploding can have an adverse effect on planets that are light years away. So that really excludes most of the galactic interior, not to mention star clusters.
And then paradoxically, you need a certain among of galactic explosions to produce the elements of life.
We're pretty much right in the sweet spot.
And then when you look at the nature of solar systems, ours seems to be a freak. Most have a gas giant fairly close to the sun. In ours, they are out fairly far, with terrestrial planets in the habitable zone.
While it's true we've found some planets in a star's habitable zone, they are all in really old, dim stars.
And it seems pretty clear that the Moon played a role in the development of life. Yet having a moon so large compared to the planet is extremely unusual.
All in all, I would bet that life, at least advanced life, is extremely rare. Look at how long our planet has had life. How long have we had intelligent life? If you count Homo Erectus, humanity has been around for a couple million years, but maybe 15,000 of that was "civilized" and only the last 100 years would be be detectable from space from far away..
The galaxy is really, really big, but at the same time, there are only certain places where life would likely survive. Out on the fringes of the galaxy, where we are. Stars have a habit of exploding can have an adverse effect on planets that are light years away. So that really excludes most of the galactic interior, not to mention star clusters.
And then paradoxically, you need a certain among of galactic explosions to produce the elements of life.
We're pretty much right in the sweet spot.
And then when you look at the nature of solar systems, ours seems to be a freak. Most have a gas giant fairly close to the sun. In ours, they are out fairly far, with terrestrial planets in the habitable zone.
While it's true we've found some planets in a star's habitable zone, they are all in really old, dim stars.
And it seems pretty clear that the Moon played a role in the development of life. Yet having a moon so large compared to the planet is extremely unusual.
All in all, I would bet that life, at least advanced life, is extremely rare. Look at how long our planet has had life. How long have we had intelligent life? If you count Homo Erectus, humanity has been around for a couple million years, but maybe 15,000 of that was "civilized" and only the last 100 years would be be detectable from space from far away..
Your making the assumption that aliens didn't have their stumbling points too. I think any intelligent race would be capable of having a nuanced approach and not seeing things in black and white.
What? That's the best outcome. Maybe water-dwelling multicellular lifeforms in Europa. We have no means of meeting intelligent life on our own, which means they would have to come to us and that's most likely to not turn out well.
We might be just like ants for them: insignificant. Who knows how different a civilization capable of interstellar travel is from ours?
Most of your beginning stuff is supposition/based on old research.
We have only been able to detect extrasolar planets for 20 years, and for the majority of that time we could only detect the largest of gas giants. As our techniques improve, we are finding more and more earth-sized planets. In fact, 3 months ago, NASA announced that they had confirmed over 700 new exoplanets, most between the sizes of Earth and Neptune. 30 years ago there wasn't even any direct evidence that other systems had planets. Now we know they are pretty damn common. A 2012 study estimated that the average star in the milky way had 1.6 planets within 10 AU. A Nov 2013 study of Kepler data stated that 15-30% of sun-like stars have an earth sized planet in the habitable zone.
The moon no doubt shaped life on earth, but it wasn't required for life on earth. If we are talking about bacterial life, than I don't see any reason at all for it to be a rare occurrence. Earth bacteria survives in every imaginable climate, and some species can take over 1000 times the radiation that humans can. If they were deep underground, or deep under water, it would take an extremely close supernova to kill them off, even in the galactic core.
Your point about intelligent life is better. Who knows how quickly our planet reached the stage of multicellular life compared to the universal norm. Who knows how commonly intelligence is selected for (probably pretty commonly given the fact that we have seen trends towards increased intelligence in several vertebrate lines, mollusks, and arthropods). Who knows how often that increasing intelligence actually leads to "intelligent" life/civilization. Our sample size is 1 so far.
Partial Gamification
Banned
SETI has an advocacy and education arm, and listening to extra-terrestrial radio waves are just one component in the study of life elsewhere; panchromaticSETI, astrobiology, etc. It also has ties with space agencies and universities, its pushing the drive for interest in searching for intelligent life. The claim is life will be found elsewhere in our lifetimes, given the funding. The 99% likely to find intelligent life was open-ended, not necessarily in twenty years. Thread title/article title inflate the claim. "Give us money and we will find intelligent life [eventually] because its out there." Maybe some gaffer will be inspired to search the cosmos for life and be the one to find the signal that changes everything. It seems like a blind crapshoot until a larger survey of the near galaxy is done.
Its all up for assumption/guesses. But, if keeping a planet clean to ensure your viability as a species is any mark to grade upon, we've failed by that standard. Seeing things black and white is one thing, but seeing that a species is poisoning itself for profit is another. In a universe with infinite possibilities, its safe to say that if you catalog things, or make a map of the universe by species. A creature shitting itself, then eating its own shit inside of a cage is still that. Whether or not its important to them, my side is just as valid as yours. But at the base, we have a species that is killing itself. If you can wait it out (for resources as some think) it wouldn't be worth the effort, outside of waiting it out. If these things can bend time/travel dimensionally as would be needed for interstellar travel. Any intelligent race would know that humans have a shelf life, which they are promoting the end of yearly.
Dealing with anything thats been evolving for millions of years, you're inherently going to have a creature/intelligence that is fully aware of the direction humans are on earth. The space travel just bolsters that intelligence. And their societies have made it to the point of intergalactic travel, efficiently, without destroying themselves along the way.
jhmtehgamr20xx
Banned
TBF most all of the problems in these places also come from Western capitalism-indoctrinated processes and planted corruption, and ripple effects that expand outward. For example a lot of countries in these places can't even make product with their own natural resources w/o high mark ups, or look at how corporations meddled in Indonesian gov't to give themselves super-cheap labor there (basically affecting the rupee value).
Not saying all the problems in those places come from Western meddling, but capitalism as it is today is a very Western concept and capitalism has definitely taken negative root in those places economic and cultural sovereignty, just as it has here in America. And things are not honky-dory here either: dead middle class, incompetent political parties, debasing of the dollar, etc. Almost all of it can be traced back to hyper-capitalism, or the over-saturation of its practice.
But none of this has anything to do with aliens eating dinner with us at our homes (if we're worth anything to them) so that's all I can say about that.
Ether_Snake
å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®
No, it only comes from a position of superiority. Tell me it was Western Capitalism-indoctrination that made Arabs champions of the slave trade in Africa.
jhmtehgamr20xx
Banned
Well, I did say most, not all. And I mean problems intrinsically tied to economy/self-sustaining capacity. As for superiority, by far the biggest enabler of any supposed "superiority" comes from financial wealth i.e money and material possessions.
Stuff that, admittedly, has always been a part of humanity in one form or another. But it was Western hyper-capitalism that accelerated adoption to saturation; it perverted itself in the process and that perversion found its way into other countries as a natural byproduct of capitalism becoming the defacto economic model for them..
Fried Food
Banned
yeah but they won't be the cool kind, who cares about some single cell BS
CurlySaysX
Banned
We will find ourselves.
Are you suggesting any aliens we may potentially encounter will be perfect? No wars, no violence, no ecological damage to their own planet to get where they are or that greed is an alien concept to them? And that humans are incapable of learning from their mistakes? Any intelligent race will know that we spent billions of years getting to this point and they probably did too. We've come a long way and we still have a long way to go.
Now as to whether said aliens would be benevolent or hostile is unknown but I believe they would recognize our potential and perhaps even fear it.
t-storm
Member
Yeah... I'm inclined to believe that a more advanced and intelligent race would be less concerned about the details and more about the bottom line: that human beings are still killing each other. For what? Until we as a race recognize this and outright stop it, I'd like to think any other advanced and intelligent alien life would put a warning out to others to avoid us and let us be.
no. I suggested what I posted about their p.o.v on humans. And that they know the trajectory of ruining a planet for our own species. You're ignoring me when I say that with mass extinctions, poisoning water supplies, starving to death, killing bees that pollinate food, and non renewable clean energy, there is a shelf life for that lifestyle. And a knowledgeable influence would know exactly what it eventually leads to. In a universe of life, the human destroying itself on earth might not be too fascinating.
I am also saying that a species travelling space will likely see us as infantile, and they'd wait us out if they needed the planet for any resources. If time is nothing to them. They would have surely had their mistakes as well. As that's inherent with evolution.
At the point they are travelling, they would probably be from a society capable of not Killing itself before discovering efficient space travel, which probably took like minds of all their world to achieve. At that point. Before that? Well obviously they had to evolve, but how far they are from shit eating in a cage, would determine their mental state. Could be millions of years ago, they lived like us. Could be any species in a world of infinite space. There isn't a right answer, just what's likely. There's room for perfect societies, as well as flawed ones. But it's clear that destroying yourself isn't optimal. However it's read by any species.
there isn't one type of intelligence or alien species out there. So when I say my post is just as valid, that's what I mean.
HalfBakedProphet
Member
tbh humanity needs to knocked down a few pegs. I think the Turians would be perfect for the job
I'm always curious about this type of reasoning.
So, there's a gigantic coverup about aliens having visited us, top ultra secret stuff, so the authorities are lying, BUT there's some testimonies of a handful of people, on their deathbeds, who were privy to some of this information.
So why exactly wouldn't these testimonies be the actual complete bogus?
Watch out. If you entertain anything that isn't a school textbook fact, GAF will brand you a conspiracy theorist lowlife scum.
They are privately funded.
Yeah, who needs facts? Lets believe in stuff because reasons.
Phire Phox
Banned
Should have been first post.
ArchedThunder
Banned
If I can get to the bonezone with them, yes it counts.
The discussion was about whether or not the military has the capability of keeping a secret, behind doors of threats and top secret clearance. The major and others coming forward about what happened in roswell is just that. These are people who have been trained to defend our country, and these are high ranking officials. So I take their word for it, due to their qualifications as an expert in their field. Testifying that there is a craft knocking out your nuclear weapons while signing affidavits to offer it as public record/evidence doesn't scream bogus to me.
The 'handful' of people on their deathbeds was mentioned mainly just for roswell as in 2014 there are over a hundred high ranking military/phycisits/faa controllers/private contractors have gone on record for public hearings, that will testify to congress under oath. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtmpaM0PqyI With documents that verify their accounts.
The french government, the mexican government, the brazilian government, the new zealand government, as well as the british government have started overturning classified materials that show that these reports/investigations were previously classified, and secret.
If you personally think that they are all bogus, that is fine. But I see no benefit outside of ridicule and possible harassment. If you don't believe in expert witness testimony from our most trained military and astronauts Thats a personal thing. But i don't find it too far out to take expert witness testimony for what it is. In a combination with other countries declassifying. Sure, everyone can be lying, but i don't see a reason to condemn everyone as a liar when they aren't the ones keeping secrets from the public with threats of death.
The military/governments are capable of keeping secrets. And even when you have the people responsible for the lies coming forward, some how they are lying. The only ones that seem to be lying to the public is the military/gov.
At the end of the day, the alien situation here/technology situation is that its either a well kept secret, or the real thing. Both are frankly possible. With room for a little bit of column A and B. But no, the military is pretty good at keeping secrets from the public. Its really safe to say that.
Dont worry, these guys have been going through different simulations for decades. We're safe
Aliens waited until they all got old. Clever.
DonasaurusRex
Online Ho Champ
...oh my God is this the angle people are going for these days? ...that doesn't even take effort...
FrankieMcGuire
Banned
To think we are alone in this huge a%# universe is cocky as hell.
Earth is a sandcorn on a beach.
Earth is a sandcorn on a beach.
i think it should, if they are sentient. they are just a different type of life.
Eye witness testimony has a really, really poor value. People might just have seen something that wasn't there. Mistook something for something else. Be nuts. Want attention. Straight up make shit up.
This is the completely unsubstantiated testimony of a few, against statements of another few who said "we have no such thing in our secret bases", and so far there is absolutely no undeniable facts of aliens ships or anything else. There are stories, no more than that.
So, show me the data, and not "this former USAF officer made a declaration". Because this has absolutely sweet fuck all value.
And "well the military have secrets, therefore aliens" is really a gigantic leap in logic that follows for nothing else than "because reasons".
If you go by that logic, since governments have secret services, you might has well conclude that any of them right now is planning to start WWIII within the next 2 days.
The probability of life having existed elsewhere is high, however, locating a planet with the ideal conditions for life that is currently at a similar stage for fostering that life as Earth seems rather low. We have only had the technology to detect signs of life on other planets for an extremely short period of human history, and an even shorter period of Earth history. If humanity survives for a few more million years on Earth, we'll probably be able to locate other life having progressed enough elsewhere to be detectable on Earth. But with the length of time it takes for light to travel coupled with the amount of time it takes for life to evolve, I wouldn't hold your breath. Whole alien civilizations may have developed beyond ours and been wiped out, and we would never know, because light from the beginnings of the life that resulted in those civilizations wouldn't reach us for millions of light years or more. If we didn't have to rely on light to detect life, then maybe it would be a different story.
you guys should all read this book, Vacuum Diagrams by Stephen Baxter, its a collection of shot stories and tells a future history of human kind. He comes up with some extremely interesting life forms. Baxter's imagination is mindblowing:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0061059048/?tag=neogaf0e-20
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0061059048/?tag=neogaf0e-20
Slow down. The quality of a witness testimony is always dictated on their expertise, and their background, and what exactly they are saying. You're throwing out everything from majors to astronauts who are all trained to know what they are seeing, whom are all trained to control our nuclear weapons and our skys(test pilots as well). These aren't idiots who are just saying things because they are stupid or they are some how unqualified. These are the best men on the job. These people have all served our country in the best way they could. They've managed to attain high rank, as well as be the best minds qualified for space travel. Its a subject that just brings ridicule, not really world fame for the group of people involved in trying to get congress to hear their testimonies. They are literally more qualified than you or I to speak on military/technological subjects. These are the people that tell you its swamp gas.
Originally, I say that the military is capable of keeping top-secrets. Such as alien life, or any other technology they see fit. Which I have thoroughly explained is very possible. As well as testimony from people who were involved in roswell. Which was quite the large cover up.
I've been saying this the entire time. Where does that leave us? And I'm not declaring there is proof of alien creatures.
There is proof of intimidation, secrecy, around the UFO/UAP issue in the United States, and other countries with unclassified documents. So when a person says its impossible to keep such a thing a secret, I defer to the secrecy that we currently know about. I also deferred to the stealth bomber that was created and operated in total secrecy. There is definitely proof of military secrecy. And that secrecy is surrounding a subject of incredible technology that is unknown to humans at the current moment.
So can the military keep alien life a secret from the general public? Yes.
BruiserBear
Banned
I'm assuming when they say "find aliens" they're really saying "we'll identify a planet that's atmosphere tells us there is life on it".
Actually getting to that planet is an entirely different matter that probably won't be resolved for hundreds of years.
Actually getting to that planet is an entirely different matter that probably won't be resolved for hundreds of years.
Epsilon-delta
Banned
commedieu said:
Attaining a rank of Major isn't that hard in the military. O1-O3 is automatic, and O4 (Major/LtC) is the first really competitive promotion.
commedieu said:
No, but you're implying it though.
commedieu said:
Correlation does not imply causation. You can apply that logic to any government conspiracy. Going by your post history, you already have going by your posts in the 9/11 thread:
commedieu said:
commedieu said:
Yup, only you commedieu and other conspiracy theorists, are privy to such information. Only you guys know the real truth and the rest of us are just sheep.
We need to get our probes into Titan's lakes asap.
OuterLimits
Gold Member
Perhaps we are the only species so far to achieve space travel, or one of the few?
Life has been on Earth for around 2 billion years, but only in the last 70 years did life finally leave the planet. Even now, an asteroid strike could wipe us out, or any other significant natural disaster or disease could cause chaos and put an end to space exploration. Or we could destroy ourselves with the technology we created.
There could be a number of planets with life. However, intelligent space traveling species may be so rare that we never find each other.
Life has been on Earth for around 2 billion years, but only in the last 70 years did life finally leave the planet. Even now, an asteroid strike could wipe us out, or any other significant natural disaster or disease could cause chaos and put an end to space exploration. Or we could destroy ourselves with the technology we created.
There could be a number of planets with life. However, intelligent space traveling species may be so rare that we never find each other.
OriginofHysteria
Banned
So are we talking independence day aliens or ET
I've never said Im only privy to such information. Been sharing it with you guys. I never said anyone in here was a sheep, and I never insulted anyone. I'm not speaking down to anyone, or condescending to anyone.
I've just been posting about how well the military can keep a secret, with military men making comments about it. Its not easy to become an astronaut, so why are we picking and choosing what we are claiming. If witness testimony is all bunk, it doesn't matter the rank or anything that a person does. You don't have to pretend to get a gotcha moment here. I have the tag for a reason.
We are still here, with the information that the military can keep a secret when they want. As they did with the stealth bomber, as well as roswell. Can the military keep a secret about technology and aliens? You bet they can. There is nothing that is being correlated outside of the facts that the Military can keep secrets when they decide to. So the notion that they can't is absurd.
You can't just tell me what I'm saying, why not just read it instead. The military can keep technology as well as aliens secret if they wanted to. And its not to say that the real deal isn't happening around the world with the 1% of UFO sightings.
So far we just have people that were there, are there, saying what happened. Thats all anyone can go on. But its not as if the only thing that proves military secrecy is witness testimony as its being bolstered to the front lines of my post.
The secrecy isn't shared outside of the USA, which is why in combination with testimony about UFO's, the world seems to have a different outlook on what is happening. Firstly by admitting that its not all harmless. These things are getting in the way of planes. China's entire airport was shut down by one.
I understand the need to approach things the way you are. But, if Im saying that the UFO issue is something that is considered sensitive/secret then the military can very well keep it a secret. Opinions about witness testimony aside. UFO's seem to be threats to other nations aviation security, they are reported on. You have military men talking about things that other governments are fine publishing and investigating. Yet they are the ones that are misinformed.
I don't buy that, because its not logical to believe that.
edit;
heres an army Colonel.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/16/ufo-amnesty-sought-by-army-colonel_n_1513197.html
double;
And the bolded quote about the plane that wasn't there, was about the plane that hit the pentagon, and how no one captured any footage. (The CCTV's from a nearby hotel finally surfaced and is probably being discussed in that thread) That we had no footage of. Not the planes that hit the towers. I'm not that crazy...
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