UFO stuff

[Conflicting Thought]

Hello wonderfull people, i just found this story or news (i really dont know if it can be considered as news) about an american intelligence whistleblower about found crafy of non human origin  https://archive.is/uUDC5 my first instinct is to think that its bs, and since im not from the us i wanted to ask the board what do you think of this, what is your opinnion on David Grusch, is he trust worthy? i read that he testified for 11 hrs in front of congress, is there something to that? does his appearence in front of congress makes this more legit or nah?

im reading that there are a number of intelligence people coming forward and backing up what Grusch is saying, but i really dont know if there is any weight to all of this.

what do you think?

[Rippounet]

*insert obligatory X-files reference here*

Eh, I used to love thinking about this stuff as a teenager but became bored with it, because even assuming aliens are in fact watching us, they will only make contact on their own terms, which could happen next week or a thousand years from now.
As for Grusch, chances are high that he's just some guy who saw the recent releases of UFO footage as an opportunity to become famous. Funnily enough though, this doesn't rule out the possibility that he is correct and that some alien stuff was in fact found and kept secret. What of it, though? It only gets interesting if there are rumors of a major -and somewhat mysterious- scientific breakthrough, but I don't believe we have noises of that.

The alien stuff quickly runs into the same problem as the simulation question: it could be true, but it'll still have no immediate effect on our lives. We can trade exciting or funny science-fiction scenarios though. SMBC has some pretty good ones:

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/aliens

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/humans-2

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/a-realistic-alien-invasion

Edited June 6, 2023 by Rippounet

[Conflicting Thought]

22 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

*insert obligatory X-files reference here*

Eh, I used to love thinking about this stuff as a teenager but became bored with it, because even assuming aliens are in fact watching us, they will only make contact on their own terms, which could happen next week or a thousand years from now.
As for Grusch, chances are high that he's just some guy who saw the recent releases of UFO footage as an opportunity to become famous. Funnily enough though, this doesn't rule out the possibility that he is correct and that some alien stuff was in fact found and kept secret. What of it, though? It only gets interesting if there are rumors of a major -and somewhat mysterious- scientific breakthrough, but I don't believe we have noises of that.

The alien stuff quickly runs into the same problem as the simulation question: it could be true, but it'll still have no immediate effect on our lives. We can trade exciting or funny science-fiction scenarios though. SMBC has some pretty good ones:

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/aliens

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/humans-2

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/a-realistic-alien-invasion

idk if its true i wouldnt change my "material" life, but it would do something to me, it would be fucking crazy, in the abstract i can say that of course ther must be life out there, but to know that "we" have alien stuff, like actual shit from another inteligent species that is out there and must be close to earth would be something incredible to me.

from the link "He said he reported to Congress on the existence of a decades-long “publicly unknown Cold War for recovered and exploited physical material – a competition with near-peer adversaries over the years to identify UAP crashes/landings and retrieve the material for exploitation/reverse engineering to garner asymmetric national defense advantages.”

[The Anti-Targ]

What a monumental waste of time resources and money on searching for life elsewhere in the universe if "we" already know it for a fact. There would no no point in searching to see if there is life out there, the object of the search would be to locate where the aliens are from, I don't expect any object in the possession of the deep state^(TM) have "made in Gliese 581d" stickers on them, so the origin would still need to be worked out.

I think it's highly probable that life independently arose in our own solar system at least twice, which makes life elsewhere in the galaxy all but certain.

To me the only reason aliens aware of us and capable of making contact with us haven't done so in a transparent and unconcealable manner is because they are scared of how savage we are. If you want a Mass Effect analogy we're the Krogans, and God help the galaxy if someone like the Salarians up lift us before we should be.

[ThinkerX]

Anymore, I subscribe to the notion that UFO's are more of a metaphysical/paranormal phenomenon than actual aliens from another planet.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

“Unidentified” does not necessarily mean “extraterrestrial”.  While such is within the realm of the “possible” it is highly unlikely.  It is much more likely that this is new secret technology… or some other unexplained natural phenomena.  

I could be wrong.  But I doubt I am.

“Ancient Aliens” conspiracists make my head hurt.

[DMC]

4 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

“Ancient Aliens” conspiracists make my head hurt.

Prometheus was da bomb, yo.

[Crixus]

The three-body problem trilogy really changed my thinking about this, it's such a contrast to the usual fare we get in scifi around aliens civilisations, fermi paradox etc. It uses the dark forest theory: https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/the-dark-forest-theory-a-terrifying-explanation-of-why-we-havent-heard-from-aliens-yet/ 

Worth reading! 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

10 minutes ago, Crixus said:

The three-body problem trilogy really changed my thinking about this, it's such a contrast to the usual fare we get in scifi around aliens civilisations, fermi paradox etc. It uses the dark forest theory: https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/the-dark-forest-theory-a-terrifying-explanation-of-why-we-havent-heard-from-aliens-yet/ 

Worth reading! 

It is.  But it is extremely specio-centric.  It assumes other intellgent species would see the Universe the way we do and have risen to intelligence as we have.  Those are… very… large assumptions.  

They make for interesting drama but we don’t know they are accurate.  One solution to the Drake Equation is that some species has to be “first” to intellegece in a region of space.  That… might… be us.  The data is simply lacking.

 

[Crixus]

4 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

It is.  But it is extremely specio-centric.  It assumes other intellgent species would see the Universe the way we do and have risen to intelligence as we have.  Those are… very… large assumptions.  

They make for interesting drama but we don’t know they are accurate.  One solution to the Drake Equation is that some species has to be “first” to intellegece in a region of space.  That… might… be us.  The data is simply lacking.

 

Yes, lacking entirely as you say - probably like quite a few other theories out there. I just found it a refreshing change from the sort of alien scifi I've generally watched/read. 

 

[A wilding]

19 minutes ago, Crixus said:

Yes, lacking entirely as you say - probably like quite a few other theories out there. I just found it a refreshing change from the sort of alien scifi I've generally watched/read. 

It is not a new idea though. It goes back at least as far as Greg Bear's Forge of God/Anvil of Stars duology. (Incidentally, Forge of God also explores the idea that the personal weaknesses of a US president might be used to paralyse the US).

[DaveSumm]

2 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

One solution to the Drake Equation is that some species has to be “first” to intellegece in a region of space.  That… might… be us.  The data is simply lacking.

Speaking of the Drake equation / Fermi paradox … I keep meaning to ask someone knowledgable in such matters about this, as I must be wrong given the number of experts who still talk about it.

But I don’t understand what the paradox actually is. Yes, it’s extremely probable life exists on other planets. But I don’t understand the logic leap from there to “and also they probably have figured out interstellar communication / travel by now”. Everything we know about physics tells us the light speed limit is absolute, at best you can bend things a a bit using EXTRAORDINARY amounts of energy, and even then there’s no getting round the relativistic problems involved (any travellers would have to live with the fact that their species will move on many centuries in the time it takes to get anywhere).

So the solution to “where are they” would seem to be “out there, just as frustrated as us that travel and communication at such distances is essentially impossible”. It’s depressing, but I think most if not all intelligent species will perish never knowing who else is out there.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

6 minutes ago, DaveSumm said:

Speaking of the Drake equation / Fermi paradox … I keep meaning to ask someone knowledgable in such matters about this, as I must be wrong given the number of experts who still talk about it.

But I don’t understand what the paradox actually is. Yes, it’s extremely probable life exists on other planets. But I don’t understand the logic leap from there to “and also they probably have figured out interstellar communication / travel by now”. Everything we know about physics tells us the light speed limit is absolute, at best you can bend things a a bit using EXTRAORDINARY amounts of energy, and even then there’s no getting round the relativistic problems involved (any travellers would have to live with the fact that their species will move on many centuries in the time it takes to get anywhere).

So the solution to “where are they” would seem to be “out there, just as frustrated as us that travel and communication at such distances is essentially impossible”. It’s depressing, but I think most if not all intelligent species will perish never knowing who else is out there.

The Fermi Paradox is less “where are they” than… “why can’t we hear them”.  

[IheartIheartTesla]

Yeah, the answer to this specific question is that it is extremely unlikely aliens have visited us. I am interested in a different question, which is - what is the probability any alien civilization has visited another one (for the sake of simplicity we can confine ourselves to the Milky Way). Wouldnt that be awesome if First Contact has already happened or is going to happen with a high degree of certainty?

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

USOs are just as interesting. There are a number of stories from people in various Navies around the world saying they saw things moving super fast at depths no human vessel could reach at the time. There's a bunch from people who were on submarines during WW2.

[Fez]

13 minutes ago, DaveSumm said:

But I don’t understand what the paradox actually is. Yes, it’s extremely probable life exists on other planets. But I don’t understand the logic leap from there to “and also they probably have figured out interstellar communication / travel by now”. Everything we know about physics tells us the light speed limit is absolute, at best you can bend things a a bit using EXTRAORDINARY amounts of energy, and even then there’s no getting round the relativistic problems involved (any travellers would have to live with the fact that their species will move on many centuries in the time it takes to get anywhere).

I'm no expert. But my understanding we already have some decent theoretical models for warp drives, and if we don't wipe ourselves out maybe we get to test them out eventually. An alien species that was more peaceful than ours, and with a bit more advanced energy production, could probably test them at roughly our current level of technology. Maybe none of them actually work in practice, but to me it seems like the paradox is still fully in place.

[polishgenius]

10 minutes ago, Fez said:

But my understanding we already have some decent theoretical models for warp drives,

 

I don't think we do. I'm also no phycisist, but from what I've seen, it's a couple of proposals going 'oh we'd need 'exotic matter' that doesn't exist', one going 'don't need that but it does mean bending space by, err, not sure how exactly', and one that might actually have some underpinnings in that it doesn't require the shattering of Newtonian and relativistic physics, but, crucially, manages that by not actually breaking the speed of light and is therefore more of a 'really really fast drive' than a 'warp drive'.

 

 

Ultimately, our current understanding of physics still rests on the speed of light being the maximum possible achievable speed- until we prove that it's somehow breakable, any paradoxes or theories based on that idea need to be taken with a big pinch of salt.

[Week]

23 minutes ago, Fez said:

I'm no expert. But my understanding we already have some decent theoretical models for warp drives, and if we don't wipe ourselves out maybe we get to test them out eventually. An alien species that was more peaceful than ours, and with a bit more advanced energy production, could probably test them at roughly our current level of technology. Maybe none of them actually work in practice, but to me it seems like the paradox is still fully in place.

We still have James Cromwell too - so there's definitely a chance.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

8 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

 

I don't think we do. I'm also no phycisist, but from what I've seen, it's a couple of proposals going 'oh we'd need 'exotic matter' that doesn't exist', one going 'don't need that but it does mean bending space by, err, not sure how exactly', and one that might actually have some underpinnings in that it doesn't require the shattering of Newtonian and relativistic physics, but, crucially, manages that by not actually breaking the speed of light and is therefore more of a 'really really fast drive' than a 'warp drive'.

 

 

Ultimately, our current understanding of physics still rests on the speed of light being the maximum possible achievable speed- until we prove that it's somehow breakable, any paradoxes or theories based on that idea need to be taken with a big pinch of salt.

Warp drive’s don’t actual break light speed they warp reality by creating a bubble of energy around a ship that allows it to move faster than like according the perception of people on the ship.  

I’ve always wondered how the relativity of time would play with “warp drive”.  Star Trek just pretends it isn’t an issue.  I suspect there would be “time debt” for those traveling compaired to those who don’t travel.

[Kalbear]

1 hour ago, DaveSumm said:

Speaking of the Drake equation / Fermi paradox … I keep meaning to ask someone knowledgable in such matters about this, as I must be wrong given the number of experts who still talk about it.

But I don’t understand what the paradox actually is. Yes, it’s extremely probable life exists on other planets. But I don’t understand the logic leap from there to “and also they probably have figured out interstellar communication / travel by now”. Everything we know about physics tells us the light speed limit is absolute, at best you can bend things a a bit using EXTRAORDINARY amounts of energy, and even then there’s no getting round the relativistic problems involved (any travellers would have to live with the fact that their species will move on many centuries in the time it takes to get anywhere).

So the solution to “where are they” would seem to be “out there, just as frustrated as us that travel and communication at such distances is essentially impossible”. It’s depressing, but I think most if not all intelligent species will perish never knowing who else is out there.

The problem is one of time.

The universe is old. The paradox is around "why are there no aliens given how long its been". Imagine that instead of humans dinosaurs were the ones that evolved intelligence - 60 million years ago. Imagine how noisy we would be 58 million years from now. Now think that dinosaurs are even younger from a universe perspective than most things, and some intelligent life could have had a billion year head start. 

And while what we know of physics means high energy travel is hard, low energy travel that takes thousands of years is within our tech abilities right now. Yeah, it may take thousands of years to go places but even with that limit the galaxy should be teeming with probes and colonizers and harvesters. And those are cheap to do - the equivalent of dandelion seeds. So ... why aren't they there?

One idea is that it's a lot less likely for intelligence to evolve to a point where we leave the nest - that intelligence is not a species survival trait. Given enough timelines all smart species kill themselves.

Another is the dark forest idea, where you must assume that any species that is noisy might be able to wipe you out, so you must take precautions - either be quiet or obliterate that group before they can threaten. 

Another is that intelligence always evolves past this plane of existence and interstellar travel is just not interesting.