Extraterrestrial Life

[Surenas]

I am officialy confuzed

 

Already served in the army?

The confusion fades away afterwards :laugh:

 

A strike has been issued for this post. Please ignore any offense which you might get from it, and continue with the discussion. Thanks.

 

- Vagrant0

Edited August 26, 2010 by Vagrant0

[Burnagirl]

Interesting indeed this alien topic ... I must say that I do believe in aliens, I live next door to a few ... they give me these strange hand signals whenever I see them, I still havent been able to decipher what they're trying to tell me.

They do the same thing with the other neighbors, who seem to understand perfectly, I think that I'm living in an alien infested surburb and they dont know that I'm not one of them, you know ... an alien.

 

Alright, jokes aside, I do not believe in extra-terrestrials, every phenomenon that would indicate their activity or presence can be explained away.

If they did exist why not just contact the powers that be and show themselves ?

 

Because the people of earth would panic and chaos would ensue ... I hear you say.

Baloney, the world right now is so ripe and open to a "visitation" after all the media attention concerning aliens that people might only be slightly peturbed but not enough to go whacky.

So, I repeat, they are just a hoax birthed by the gullible who want to increase the population of their nation - The sovereign republic of Gulliblity.

 

Recently ... the 26th of July this year, a so-called alien craft was spotted - they say - hovering over Pretoria - the captial of South Africa ... the story was reported as follows;

 

UFO stuns Pretoria residents

2010-07-26 09:19

 

 

Fanie van Rooyen - (the reporter from the Afrikaans newspaper "The Beeld")

 

Pretoria - An unidentified flying object (UFO), which apparently consisted of three bright lights, astounded residents from Booysens in Pretoria for two consecutive nights for several hours.

 

Engela van der Spuy, 67, who lived in Attie Street in Booysens, contacted Beeld after she watched the strange set of lights on Thursday night for the second consecutive night.

 

"I'm not saying it's green little space men," said Van der Spuy. "We just really want to know what it is."

 

Van der Spuy for the first time saw the UFO on Wednesday night shortly after sunset in the western sky.

 

"I couldn't make out the shape of the object because the three lights were too bright, but it almost had a heart shape because there were two lights on top, a blue light on the left and an emerald green light directly next to it, on the right side, with a big bright white light underneath it which shone straight down," she said.

 

Dumbfounded

 

According to her, the UFO hung in the air for two hours without moving and then, at about 20:30, slowly started moving down, diagonally to the left and still down, disappearing behind the horizon.

 

On Thursday night, the UFO again appeared shortly after sunset and at 20:30 again started moving down before disappearing.

 

"I called all the neighbours and we looked at it together, but no one could figure out what it could be. All we knew, was that it definitely was not a star or a normal plane."

 

Henrico Swart, 19, Van der Spuy's neighbour, who looked at the UFO through binoculars, was dumbfounded.

 

"It has to have a very strange shape, because even through the binoculars I couldn't make out the shape," said Swart.

 

"All you could see, were three bright lights."

 

On enquiry, spokespeople from the Hercules police station, the Johannesburg Planetarium and the South African Air Force had no knowledge of the incident and were unable to explain the phenomenon.

 

"I don't think it is a flying saucer, because we would've been able to see the saucer shape. This is something even stranger," said Van der Spuy.

 

Ok, what the UFO really was:

 

Gauteng UFO identified

2009-11-22 16:03

 

Johannesburg - It was a meteor which lit up the skies over Johannesburg and Pretoria on Saturday night, an astronomer has confirmed.

 

"What people saw last night was almost certainly a meteor," Claire Flanagan an astronomer at the Johannesburg Planetarium said on Sunday.

 

People saw a bright "greenish, bluish" light heading towards Pretoria at about 23:00 on Saturday night.

 

"It moved over the Gauteng Province towards Limpopo... it travels very fast and was about 90km up," said Flanagan.

 

The meteor was a hot topic of discussion in the forum on mybroadband.co.za.

 

"I saw a light flash the sky at about 20:00, at first I thought I was imagining it, but my friend also saw it," wrote someone who saw the meteor.

 

"... Maybe it's people getting abducted by aliens...I walked in the house looked out [and] the sky was lit. It looked how it normally [does] at 05:00."

 

Another wrote: "I [saw] it too in Hartbeespoort dam. Almost looked like daylight for a few seconds, not sure if it was a meteor or not... pretty cool..."

 

Others claimed to have heard and seen a "bright explosion".

 

"I was in Lonehill sitting outside with some friends at around 23:00 when my buddy noticed flashes in the distance. After he pointed, we looked up and that's when the sky lit up like day for a second or two. The sky actually went blue."

 

Flanagan said if a bang was heard, it meant that the meteor had disintegrated in the sky.

 

"The speed which it was travelling at would have caused it to burn and then disintegrate," she said.

 

Another user on the website said: "I think you guys should relax. Its Wikus Van der Merwe and his prawns," in reference to the South African-made movie District 9 which sets Johannesburg as the home of alien creatures.

 

Flanagan said that if the meteor had landed it would not have caused a major impact.

 

She could not say how big it was as it was unexpected, and not connected with any kind of shower, but said the planetarium would be investigating the incident.

 

 

- SAPA

 

So, as you can see ... for yourself .... it's just blahhhhhhh.

 

cheers Marcy

 

P.s - Aranox no insult was intended, with my gullibility example - I only read your post after I posted, so my apologies if you felt offended - nevertheless, most "alien-ites", base their beliefs on giddy excitement rather

than proper investigation ... well, that's my take on it anyway.

[Surenas]

According to the last analyses based upon the Drake equation by Ward, Brownlee, Walter an Aczel the probability of intelligent life is P = 1 (we!) for our galaxy and P = ∞ for the universe with the physical chance for an extragalactic contact equal to 0 due to the insurmountable distances between the different galaxies.

Let us assume, against Ward et al, we’d indeed have P = 2 in our galaxy, then a contact is probable within a mathematical timeframe of 700 million years and this exclusively by two reasons – within the scope of a energetically to be justified spontaneous step-by-step colonisation of the galaxy by at least one species or by a forced appearance after a cooling of the home-star, when energy costs no longer play any role and the one-way exodus is the very last attempt of the species to survive.

Now, for we aren’t yet colonized by aliens none of them was ever here in the past or we’d found relicts, technical tracks of their former presence... or WE are the descendants of them after a crash landing in the prehistory wherein they’ve lost their big marbles – and that’s improbable due to a quite similar behaviour and genetic structure of the great apes. There is thus still time left for the making of gifts for the 'gods'.

On the other hand, the coming of the last ETs on their final trip to find a new home planet in our solar system excludes any chance for a peaceful contact – the guys would have only this chance to settle down and no other. They’d take Earth by force. Boom!

Well, we as the underdogs aren’t yet annihilated and that means that they are still on their journey, if ever.

 

Future colonization, final annihilation or eternal isolation

Make your choice.

[DarkNinja13]

My opinion on this whole thing is: there has to be extra-terrestrial life.

 

Think about it, you want me to look at the stars in the night sky and believe that our sun is perfect and the only one in the universe capable of supporting life? Kinda egotistical, isn't it?

 

I am sure there is plenty of other life forms out there, perhaps not life as we think of it, but life nonetheless. As far as the "why haven't they made contact with us yet?" question.

 

1) Perhaps they know we aren't ready for it.

Imagine the panic if aliens landed at the UN and came out saying "Hi, we're from Alpha Centauri. Just popped in to see you guys." There would be mass hysteria across the world, and for many (religious fundamentalists especially) an event like this would be world shattering. So to save us from our own panic, they keep away.

 

2) Perhaps THEY aren't ready.

It's already been supposed that our technology is millenia behind theirs (Surenas, and she felt our first encounter with ETs would result in a skirmish we would loose because we are "outgunned"), but what if their tech is neck and neck with ours? I mean, NASA breaks out the party hats if we get to 3 in a countdown, but what if our nearest neighbours are in the same boat? They are saying "We'd love to see what's out there, but don't have the technology to get out there yet!" just like we are.

 

3) Perhaps they feel we aren't worth their time.

I'm a fan of the show "Doctor Who", and in that show Earth is referred to as a "Level 5 Planet". This means that as a species we have great potential, but overall we're still considered to be a primitive race. The "Level 5 Planets" are also considered "no fly zones", meaning that the dominant species should be left undisturbed for now until they evolve more.

 

So I am of the opinion that between these three scenarios, one of them is dead-on.

 

I'll also go a step further. If, quite by accident, there is contact with ETs before we're ready, I doubt it's going to unfold like it did in "Independence Day" - I just don't see it happening. I think it'll be something more like "Alien Nation", they are former slaves made refugees because their ship crash-landed on Earth. Now, they just want to live their lives and fit in.

[Aurielius]

Let me propose a galactic geographic argument, we live on a planet that is two thirds out from the center of the Milky Way on one of the lesser spiral arms and in addition we are offset from that spiral arm to the tune of 21 parsecs. In other words we live in the boondocks of the Milky Way, we are not on the main highway to anywhere, or even the secondary routes but rather on the equivalent of a dirt road leading to a relatively uninteresting part of our galaxy.

All that said I do believe in extraterritorial life because nature abhors a vacuum (no pun intended), there is just too much available space for life to spring up not to have any but us. But we may just have to find it ourselves because we are in the backwater of our galaxy, Now maybe there is a life form that likes trips in the the galactic hinterland but it's a big galaxy, and to waste the effort without some promise of reward doesn't sound like a very intelligent proposition. Last but not least I do not believe that any aliens have landed recently because mankind is incapable of keeping a secret that more than one person knows.

[DarkNinja13]

Last but not least I do not believe that any aliens have landed recently because mankind is incapable of keeping a secret that more than one person knows.

 

That has to be the best point I've seen a long time - and it's true

[evilneko]

We've actualy found it buried on mars-long dead, but bacteria and cells of entirely non earthborn origin have been found on the red graveyard. And in the shattered remains of Bollides we've found fossils of dead plankton like creatures, hundreds of thousands of years dead and single celled, but once very much alive/

 

Read New Scientist and NASA's new from time to time, keeps you in touch a little bit more with what's above.

Ah, well, I knew we had found something like that. I couldn't remember the details off the top of my head and it was late.

 

As for UFOs, well, while I do believe extraterrestrial life exists and extraterrestrial sapients are probable, I am skeptical of UFOs being alien in origin. Most "sightings" are borne out of ignorance, being simply unrecognized aircraft or natural phenomena.

[species5478]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5ehobjmVfQ&feature=related

[JimboUK]

I think the sheer number of stars and planets make life elsewhere highly likely, I don't buy the idea that life on earth is some freak accident that has not occurred elsewhere. However I don't believe any of them have paid us a visit or that they are ever likely to.

 

1. The distances are too great.

2. We're making ourselves harder to find, satellite, cable and the move to digital means we are sending far less out in to space than we used to.

3. Why would they bother? assuming they've somehow conquered the distance issue by bending space or something what would they want with a bunch of primitives who can't even put someone on their neighbouring planet?

4. As Aurielius pointed out we're out in the sticks making it unlikely they'll pass by on their way anywhere.

[Chaosblade02]

I think the sheer number of stars and planets make life elsewhere highly likely, I don't buy the idea that life on earth is some freak accident that has not occurred elsewhere. However I don't believe any of them have paid us a visit or that they are ever likely to.

 

1. The distances are too great.

2. We're making ourselves harder to find, satellite, cable and the move to digital means we are sending far less out in to space than we used to.

3. Why would they bother? assuming they've somehow conquered the distance issue by bending space or something what would they want with a bunch of primitives who can't even put someone on their neighbouring planet?

4. As Aurielius pointed out we're out in the sticks making it unlikely they'll pass by on their way anywhere.

 

I would prefer it be much less likely something like the Borg, or the Gould find their way to Earth. Maybe I watch too much sci-fi, but other species of intelligent life being out there is a certainty, and some of them would no doubt be conquerors and tyrants. Would we be prepared to deal with that right now? No freaking way. We would get owned for free, they would crush us like insects.

 

The best bet is our location in the boondocks of the galaxy would make us way less likely to be detected, because it will be at least 30000-50000 more years before our first broadcasts even reach a good portion of the galaxy, considering the diameter of our galaxy is 200k light years, by then, if we are still around, we could probably defend ourselves quite well.