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Post by abacus9900 on Mar 3, 2011 22:42:54 GMT 1
If a very advanced alien civilisation, perhaps millions of years ahead of us technologically, was in the process of constructing what to them was equivalent to a multi-lane super-highway right next to us, would we be aware of it? Would we be like ants living in our ant hill not aware that there existed a whole other civilization around us?
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Post by Progenitor A on Mar 4, 2011 8:22:06 GMT 1
Is this a reference to the proposed high-speed rail link between London and Birmingham?
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Post by abacus9900 on Mar 4, 2011 10:25:17 GMT 1
Is this a reference to the proposed high-speed rail link between London and Birmingham? Could be. ;D |
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Post by skeptic on Feb 13, 2012 19:56:49 GMT 1
It has been said that a more advanced civilization might be trying to contact us but as of yet we are not advanced enough to detect their signals, still being in the Radio Age.
We have enough trouble detecting neutrinos. They might be using tachyons for instant communication, which go through all our detectors as though they do not exist.
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Post by striker16 on Feb 16, 2012 18:30:01 GMT 1
It has been said that a more advanced civilization might be trying to contact us but as of yet we are not advanced enough to detect their signals, still being in the Radio Age. We have enough trouble detecting neutrinos. They might be using tachyons for instant communication, which go through all our detectors as though they do not exist. Another thing that stems from your point is that there may well be 'intelligent' cultures out there but at widely diverse levels of development. If so, then the number of civilisations that happen to be, more or less, on our level could be so few that looking for radio waves might yield very little chance of success. Technological societies that reached our level of development could have done so perhaps thousands or even millions of years ago so that any radio signals they emitted would have long passed the earth at a time when there weren't even human beings about. The other thing to say is that due to the immense size of the observable universe, radio waves have hardly had a chance to traverse even a fraction of it. If intelligent life is relatively scarce then the nearest ones could be so far away that by the time our communications reach them they might either have become extinct or moved on to become too sophisticated to respond to us. Who knows? |
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Post by skeptic on Feb 19, 2012 18:54:47 GMT 1
If you take it that some form of humans have been around for several million years and radio telescopes have been around for less than a century and let's say we'll have something better a century from now, then that is a very small window of contact. And as you say, our radio signals have only travelled a very tiny distance so not a lot of hope there in finding another race with an overlapping radio window with us.
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Post by striker16 on Feb 19, 2012 23:25:37 GMT 1
Well, I think we should be humble enough to admit that our science is very, very young and assuming Homo-Sapiens continue to survive and our science is able to develop then we can only guess at what knowledge might be gained in the future. What bothers me is that things could become difficult for mankind in the future due perhaps to global warming, wars (perhaps nuclear), pandemics, political and social disintegration or any number of other problems and that the pursuit of science could be placed on the back burner. Perhaps technological societies have to go through critical stages in their progress that either extinguish them or that they are able to survive and move on. Maybe we have to find a way to harmonize the peoples of the earth before we can become a truly more advanced society. This may have happened to other emerging cultures elsewhere in the cosmos in which some have come through it, some not, but we might stand at a crossroads where the future of humans and beyond are in the balance. Perhaps we are being watched to see how we handle it.
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Post by skeptic on Feb 20, 2012 8:44:21 GMT 1
UFO stories go back hundreds of years and unexplained things thousands of years. Some say Ezekiel 1 in the bible talks of aliens.
We may be in the "near neighbourhood" of an advanced race who are keeping an eye on us but will not make contact as we are still such a violent race. There is also the point of the aborigines, American Indians, Eskimos, etc whose societies were wrecked by coming into contact with a more advanced race.
Imagine if within months, 96% of the world's population were put out of work because of advanced technology which could do just about anything? Some 153,000 people die every single day, 29,000 of them babies and very young children. Imagine if all diseases could be eradicated and with people living to over 200 years old. We already have too many people in the world now.
I think we are still a long way from any alien contact and it's probably just as well.
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Post by striker16 on Feb 20, 2012 10:16:58 GMT 1
Many people dismiss UFOs as misidentifications, hoaxes, natural phenomena, planets, balloons, downright lying and all the rest but there still remain cases that defy rational explanations that have enough evidence to make us ponder whether we are being visited by advanced extraterrestrials. Another theory is that it is not extraterrestrials that we are witnessing but ultraterrestrials, i.e. advanced beings who exists here on earth but perhaps within a greater reality than human beings are currently aware of.
'I think we are still a long way from any alien contact and it's probably just as well.'
Ufologists think the major governments of the world are very much aware of an alien presence but are covering it up for reasons of national security.
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Post by skeptic on Feb 20, 2012 22:13:00 GMT 1
People have shot at UFO's and heard the bullets clang off of them only to be told they were stars. Others have been told they were the planet Venus which was in the other hemisphere at the time. Marsh gas has been blamed when conditions made that impossible. Astronomers, astronauts and pilots have seen them. They have been seen on radar, and done a ninety degree turn at 9,000 mph. Whole countries have seen them like Japan and New Zealand. And not forgetting Washington DC, as well as President Jimmy Carter. And of course people have been hypnotised to recall them, or lost time because of them and even a plane once where everyone lost 15 minutes. I was in New York in the late 70's and on TV was a man who had been there when it is said a UFO crashed in 1947. They got him out of his bed in the middle of the night. A metallurgist, he could not identify the shards of metal spread over the desert but though as thin as tin foil, it could not be bent by a strong man. He was told that if he ever said anything, he would never get another government contract again. he had just retired so did not care. Historic sightings: www.bibleufo.com/ufos.htm. |
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Post by striker16 on Feb 20, 2012 23:47:31 GMT 1
"COMETA was a high-level French UFO study organisation from the late 1990s, composed of high-ranking officers and officials, some having held command posts in the armed forces and aerospace industry.... The group was responsible for the 'COMETA Report' (1999) on UFOs and their possible implications for defence in France. The report concluded that about 5% of the UFO cases they studied were utterly inexplicable and the best hypothesis to explain them was the extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH). The authors also accused the United States government of engaging in a massive cover-up of the evidence." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COMETA |
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Post by skeptic on Feb 28, 2012 17:10:42 GMT 1
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Post by striker16 on Feb 28, 2012 22:18:32 GMT 1
Well, I think this just goes to show that our current assumptions about where life can exist and what form such life might take is quite limited to what we know about the universe so far. Perhaps there might be forms of life that we have never really thought about; this is an immense and very old universe and we are a very new species so I think we have a lot to learn. We might even have to redefine what life is in the future in light of new discoveries. Could there exist 'beings of light?'
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