Do you believe there are aliens?

Do you think aliens exist?

  • Total voters
    107
Colonel said:
We will reach and exceed the speed of light eventually.
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Oh… really? Don't have such a blind faith in the possibilities of technology. We haven't found a way to outlive our planet or our sun yet.
Perfection said:
Colonel said:
The idea that the speed of light is really a limit for which no can exceed is simply a fallacy as well.
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What fallacy is that?
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Well… what is the proof for the speed of light being the fastest speed possible? Is light slowed down by gravity or isn't it? Because, after all, light can't escape a black hole.
 
timtofly said:
Do you think that we are near the center of the universe? I would imagine that those on the outer rim would never reach those closer to the center, unless they could travel faster than light. They would have developed at a later stage, or the drift (if developed at the same time) would be impossible to overcome. While development may be fast and punctuated, wouldn't it have to evolve in basically the same way?
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As far as we know, it doesn't matter if you're at the center of the universe (if such a thing even exists) or at its rim. All observations show that stars are pretty uniformly distributed in space (that is, in galaxies, which form galaxy clusters). There are areas of higher galaxy density while others are void, but that pattern doesn't change based on location.

Not that inter-galaxy travel is all that feasible anyway, even considering FTL travel. And the position of intelligent spacefaring species in the Milky Way would matter a lot, yes.

Takhisis said:
Well… what is the proof for the speed of light being the fastest speed possible? Is light slowed down by gravity or isn't it? Because, after all, light can't escape a black hole.
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I was once better at this, because I can't elaborate on the equation used on the spot. But if you accept the following equation that gives us the energy E of a particle with rest mass m moving at velocity v (while c is light speed):

E = mc² / sqrt(1 - v²/c²)

you'll see that if your velocity v approaches light speed c, v²/c² approaches 1 and the whole denominator term approaches 0. This means as v approaches c, your energy E approaches infinity, i.e. you need infinite energy to ever reach c.

Now my knowledge on the history of special relativity is a little fuzzy so I'm not sure if this equation was around earlier than the postulate that light speed must be finite. However, it's empirically proven to be correct and therefore shows that you can't accelerate a particle with rest mass to light speed.

For your second question, yes, light is affected by gravity. Gravity affects mass, which light possesses due to its energy. You gave the best example for this yourself: black holes can "trap" light. It's also shown by so called gravity lens effects: stars "bending" light rays so that we can see objects that would otherwise be obscured by them.
 
There are Aliens from the Dark Nebula. They be the dreaded Skull Sucking Vulture Aliens of Vigor, that single planet which circles the dread massive red star of Sally 15, named after the teenage astronomer's daughter who found it. She was hiding from her parents with her boyfriend, Jake, a dusky handsome fellow of 17, and they had just had their first kiss. The observatory just seemed a good place to work out some little, petty, pathetic teanage drama that we'll get into at great length later. Sally was playing hard to get and playing with daddy's telescope when she made the discovery of the home star of the dreaded Skull Sucking Vulture Aliens, led by The Dark Lord Garg, master of his minion army of skull sucking predators, but of this she was unaware. What was on her mind after she registered the star claim, her first, with her name, Sally, was Jake's advances...

To be continued, or maybe not if you're lucky.
 
Perfection said:
There appear to be laws fundamental to the workings of the universe, and it appears that the speed of light provides a hard limit to them. Why are you so confident that that is not the case?
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Perf everything in your response can be answered in this last paragraph you wrote. It "appears" that there are fundamental laws of the universe. Even if it is impossible to actually go the speed of light or faster we will find a way to get around that to make it seem as though we can. To the other point if we will eventually go faster then the speed of light if there were aliens then we would have already seen them by now.
 
Colonel said:
Perf everything in your response can be answered in this last paragraph you wrote. It "appears" that there are fundamental laws of the universe. Even if it is impossible to actually go the speed of light or faster we will find a way to get around that to make it seem as though we can. To the other point if we will eventually go faster then the speed of light if there were aliens then we would have already seen them by now.
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Do you question the fact that the universe is governed by unchanging, fundamental laws? Or do you only doubt the fact that we can't accelerate an object with rest mass to c?

I've given an argument how this is impossible that only required special relativity and basic calculus. Do you want to question special relativity, a theory that has yet to be empirically proven wrong and was able to successfully predict hundreds of phenomena in advance?

It rather appears that you've never really grasped the difference between things that are impossible to humans and things that are impossible, period.

Furthermore, there are a number of reasons why we haven't seen aliens yet:

1. FTL travel is actually impossible.
2. They were just not smart enough to figure out how.
3. They don't care about exploring or colonising the galaxy.
4. Considering that the universe is ~13 billion years old while human civilization exists for only 10,000 years, they either went extinct before we were able to become aware of them, or have yet to develop.
5. Considering the observable universe has a radius of 46 billion lightyears, even engines that provide speeds of hundreds of c, they might never have been able to reach us, if intelligent species are sufficiently rare.
6. Considering the observable universe is (conservatively) estimated to contain 9 x 10^21 stars (that's a 9 with 21 zeros), it's pretty likely they never bothered to visit our stellar system that's not pretty remarkable.

Bottom line: the universe is HUGE, and even if I and the whole scientific community are wrong about (1), there are a number of reasons why "if there are aliens, why haven't we seen them yet" is a stupid argument against the existence of aliens.

Murky said:
I hate to imagine what aliens think of us if they based their opinion on our broadcast signals.
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Best thing: the first images they're getting from us will be of Hitler, of all people. Talk about a good first impression.
 
Leoreth said:
Spoiler :
Do you question the fact that the universe is governed by unchanging, fundamental laws? Or do you only doubt the fact that we can't accelerate an object with rest mass to c?

I've given an argument how this is impossible that only required special relativity and basic calculus. Do you want to question special relativity, a theory that has yet to be empirically proven wrong and was able to successfully predict hundreds of phenomena in advance?

It rather appears that you've never really grasped the difference between things that are impossible to humans and things that are impossible, period.

Furthermore, there are a number of reasons why we haven't seen aliens yet:

1. FTL travel is actually impossible.
2. They were just not smart enough to figure out how.
3. They don't care about exploring or colonising the galaxy.
4. Considering that the universe is ~13 billion years old while human civilization exists for only 10,000 years, they either went extinct before we were able to become aware of them, or have yet to develop.
5. Considering the observable universe has a radius of 46 billion lightyears, even engines that provide speeds of hundreds of c, they might never have been able to reach us, if intelligent species are sufficiently rare.
6. Considering the observable universe is (conservatively) estimated to contain 9 x 10^21 stars (that's a 9 with 21 zeros), it's pretty likely they never bothered to visit our stellar system that's not pretty remarkable.

Bottom line: the universe is HUGE, and even if I and the whole scientific community are wrong about (1), there are a number of reasons why "if there are aliens, why haven't we seen them yet" is a stupid argument against the existence of aliens.


Best thing: the first images they're getting from us will be of Hitler, of all people. Talk about a good first impression.
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You mean we did not send the fact that "we have nukes: stay away"? Instead we sent them a picture of a funny looking man with a dark mustache?
 
Well, I guess the German department of propaganda didn't actually consider the ramifications this would have on alien intelligences catching our television signals, but yes.

(You didn't have to quote my whole post for that one sentence, by the way).
 
I'd say that there is life outside of Earth, but can't say for sure is it on the same level as humans.
 
Colonel said:
To the other point if we will eventually go faster then the speed of light if there were aliens then we would have already seen them by now.
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Explain how they would see us? I'm willing to go with the faster than the speed of light scenario for argument's sake. I'm also willing to assume they share our characteristics of curious explorers, after all, if they're content on their planet they'll not come look for us. Two assumptions that are far, far from being certainties.

You realise the Universe is pretty big and to have aliens visit every solar system which would be capable of life regularly (lets say, every 1000 years) you'd need a vast amount of aliens dedicated to tracking down us or other aliens. So not only do they have to be many more times as exploratory and curious as us, it would about be the single most important thing in their existence to attribute that amount of resources.

So, lets say they are a long lasting civilisation, who are exploratory, who have figured out to break the speed of light, who still have the willingness to spend vast amounts of resources to search for alien intelligent life, but they missed us by a mere 100.000 years (which is a blink of an eye in the timeframe the Universe operates in)

Maybe they'd hear us? We've been sending signals into space for about .... 70 years, so they reached as far as 70 light years. Again, a minuscule distance. They'd practically have to live next door.

Sorry but your statement "if there were aliens then we would have already seen them by now" just doesn't make any sense.
 
Murky said:
What if we're super late the game and there are "Transcended" aliens that exist in some higher form (not physical). How would we be able to detect them? Why should they bother with us lowly humans?
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What suggests that this is even possible, excepting reruns of Stargate?
 
I don't know it's impossible, I just prefer not to concern myself with one out of the myriads of hypothetical possibilities that don't even have a miniscule hint going for it.
 
It seems to me people are having blind faith in many things. You really need to understand some laws of physics before you go around claiming that we will do impossible things. Unless someone has come up with some new theory, none of what you say is based on fact. Faster than light travel is pretty much out of the picture, especially for human ships.

Though I guess we still have wormholes as a backup if those exist. :)
 
?
http://gizmodo.com/5865808/has-nasas-satellite-captured-an-unidentified-object-near-mercury
medium_0ad48985e24c3e1900f4b25a753ecf8f.jpg


Though the video at the link is way cooler.
 
A space ship as large as Mercury?
 
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