So...let's talk about Aliens...

[Sci-2]

Are they out there?

Have they come to visit us? Did they help us build pyramids?

Do they abduct and probe people?

Were they the angels in the Old Testament?

How do they get here? Are they from other worlds? Or other dimensions? Maybe Earthlings from the future?

How come space seems so lonely and devoid of intelligent life?

[Morienthar]

Yes.

No

No

What??

They haven't come at all.

It isn't we just need time and advancements to look for them,at least that's what I believe.

[Prince of the North]

Ditto!

Thanks, Morienthar! You just saved me some keystrokes :)

[Sci-2]

What??

Assuming this is about the probes? I'm asking if you think the

.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Sci,

Are they out there?

Have they come to visit us? Did they help us build pyramids?

Do they abduct and probe people?

Were they the angels in the Old Testament?

How do they get here? Are they from other worlds? Or other dimensions? Maybe Earthlings from the future?

How come space seems so lonely and devoid of intelligent life?

Yes

No

No

No

No

I think humans from the future is as likely an explanation for "UFOs" as aliens.

What you're really asking for is a solution to Fermi's paradox. If aliens exist in intellegent technologically advanced civilizations why haven't we picked up signs of their EM transmissions?

[Lord Flashheart]

I am a big believer in Alien Jesus. :thumbsup:

[Francis Buck]

Are they out there?

Have they come to visit us? Did they help us build pyramids?

Do they abduct and probe people?

Were they the angels in the Old Testament?

How do they get here? Are they from other worlds? Or other dimensions? Maybe Earthlings from the future?

How come space seems so lonely and devoid of intelligent life?

Of course.

No.

No.

No.

They haven't got here, but if they have, it would be from other worlds, also known as planets.

Because our idea of "searching for intelligent life" is like taking a dixie cup, dipping into the ocean, and then declaring it lifeless due to lack of fish.

[sologdin]

all your questions find answers in RSB, no?

[Morienthar]

What you're really asking for is a solution to Fermi's paradox. If aliens exist in intellegent technologically advanced civilizations why haven't we picked up signs of their EM transmissions?

Probably because we are too far away(In which case they will eventually reach us) or too backwater.

[Every]

Were they the angels in the Old Testament?

Allow me to introduce you to the most glorious book you will ever read: http://www.amazon.co...d/dp/1569247455

Carry it with you and you will never again lack for a source of instant hilarity. Just don't ever let anyone see what you're reading.

[awesome possum]

They exist, without a doubt in my mind. The universe is so unfathomably vast that it seems it should be considered impossible that other life doesn't exist.

[Stubby]

Are they out there?

Have they come to visit us? Did they help us build pyramids?

Do they abduct and probe people?

Were they the angels in the Old Testament?

How do they get here? Are they from other worlds? Or other dimensions? Maybe Earthlings from the future?

How come space seems so lonely and devoid of intelligent life?

Dunno

Doubt it. Doubt it.

No

No

Presupposes that they do. Dunno. Dunno. Doubt it.

Because it's big. Really fucking big.

Having said all that, I would like contact to happen in my lifetime.

[Starkess]

The universe is far too large to not have produced other life. On the other hand, the universe is far too large (in both time and space) for us to run across that other life. Probably.

[Trebla]

Are they out there?

Have they come to visit us? Did they help us build pyramids?

Do they abduct and probe people?

Were they the angels in the Old Testament?

How do they get here? Are they from other worlds? Or other dimensions? Maybe Earthlings from the future?

How come space seems so lonely and devoid of intelligent life?

Yes. Absolutely. I like watching science programs and feeling humbled by what is all out there. I watched one program that gave an example of how large our galaxy is. They said if you placed a basketball in your driveway and if that b-ball was our sun, the rest of the galaxy would be as large as the continental United States. That is just our Milky Way, which has over 100 billion stars. Scientists believe that there could be hundreds of billions of other galaxies. It is arrogance to believe that we are the only planet that has intelligent life.

Yes and no. I'm going to be in the minority and say they have visited but the pyramids were all human.

No. Anal probes are definitely a human invention

No. Another human invention. ;)

No idea how they get here. I just think it's possible. I only have to see how far mankind has advanced in just the last 150 years. I believe that other civilizations could have easily advanced to a point where they have figured out how to visit other worlds.

See my first answer.

[Sci-2]

Ah, thanks Ser Scot, I'd forgotten the term Fermi Paradox.

Allow me to introduce you to the most glorious book you will ever read: http://www.amazon.co...d/dp/1569247455

Carry it with you and you will never again lack for a source of instant hilarity. Just don't ever let anyone see what you're reading.

Heh, thanks, might have to check it out...but after perusing Chariots of the Gods I think I'm up to speed on all Aliens Visited the Ancients stuff.

I think the whole culture and psychology surrounding aliens is pretty fascinating even if I have a hard time accepting the claims being made.

[kungtotte]

There's absolutely no reason to assume that intelligent life in the universe exists at the same time as we do.

Humans have gone from "Hey this bipedal thing is pretty cool" to landing on the nearest celestial body in about 3 million years, and if we're being supremely generous we might be around for another three million. That would mean we've been here for 0.0013% of the Earth's history, and 0.00046% of the universe's existence.

Less than a blink of an eye. Twenty intelligent, space-faring civilizations could have been around before we made it onto the scene, and countless others might show up long after we're gone.

[emberling]

It seems to me that most aliens (intelligent extraterrestrial life, or any extraterrestrial life) would probably be so different that we wouldn't even recognize them as such. Think about the way we perceive the world - five specific senses, some of which are barely useful, the rest of which are limited to narrow spectra - and how much of our thinking is based around those paradigms. If aliens saw objects as collections of discrete atoms rather than solid geometry as we do, would their mathematics look anything like ours? With different mathematics and different sensory paradigms, would they place any significance on the electromagnetic waves that SETI sends out and listens for?

Stealing Trebla's phrasing: it is arrogance to assume that because we are a certain way, other life will also be that way. It is arrogance to assume that our understanding of the workings of the universe, human-centric and Earth-centric and Sol-centric as it is, resembles the understanding that would be developed by another race in another place. It is arrogance to assume that if we saw alien life, we would recognize it as alive and like us, or they would recognize us as alive and like them.

Or in other words:

For thousands more years the mighty ships tore across the empty wastes of space and finally dived screaming on to the first planet they came across - which happened to be the Earth - where due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog.

[Spring Bass]

1. I think it's likely that there's alien life out there. We've found rocky exo-planets in habitable orbits around stars with just 2-3 space telescopes and ground observation, which makes it seem like Earth's set of conditions are less and less special every day - although we won't know for sure until we do spectrography on some of their atmospheres to get atmospheric composition (so far, we've only done it on a "hot Jupiter" planet).

2. No, and the "aliens built the pyramid" thing is stupid. The pyramids actually show the limitations of ancient Egyptian technology, since their shape and composition was dictated by the building materials and technology that they had. Any alien civilization capable of traveling across the stars is going to be capable of building stuff vastly more impressive that that.

3. No

4. No

5. Other worlds, but not sure how they could get here. All proposals for interstellar travel except Orion are based on largely speculative technologies, and Orion is pretty speculative as well. I think it's entirely possible that alien civilizations don't expand much in terms of interstellar travel, particularly if they have to effectively duplicate their industrial infrastructure at every "destination" in order to send probes further onward. Moreover, once you did into the whole "if they were here, they should have spammed the galaxy with self-replicating probes and colonies" argument, you find a ton of assumptions that may not necessarily hold, and which don't even hold for humanity. For example, we have the technology to build massive off-world facilities in space albeit at great expense, and yet we mostly aren't doing it.

6.. The problem is separation in space and time. The vast distances involved make it very difficult to cross between stars or detect accidental radio signals. SETI used to have an FAQ with the estimated maximum distance at which you could detect certain types of radio and TV signals with a kilometer-wide radio telescope, and it wasn't good - virtually all of them were undetectable not too far out from the outer edge of our solar system. SETI's only real hope for finding something is if some other civilization out there is deliberately "pinging" other solar systems with powerful narrow-band radio broadcasts. The interstellar travel possibilities aren't much better, since you either have to spend vast amounts of energy or have a starship that can last for centuries or millenia functioning in interstellar space (the technology for either is completely speculative at this point).

As mentioned by Kungtotte, "time" is a factor as well. We've only been observing space with something more effective than the naked eye for a few centuries. An alien space probe could have passed through the solar system in 500 CE, and we'd never be the wiser. Even now, we'd have a ton of trouble detecting a Voyager-8-sized alien spacecraft if it was drifting through our solar system unpowered.

[fuseprime]

Less than a blink of an eye. Twenty intelligent, space-faring civilizations could have been around before we made it onto the scene, and countless others might show up long after we're gone.

Among some of the weird things that pop into my mind throughout the day, this is one of them. I absolutely believe there is or has been other life in the universe. I think at this point in humanity, it'd be utter ignorance to believe otherwise.

Perhaps we will someday be the advanced aliens that arrive in a distance planet thousands of years from now.

[Altherion]

Are they out there?

Have they come to visit us? Did they help us build pyramids?

Do they abduct and probe people?

Were they the angels in the Old Testament?

How do they get here? Are they from other worlds? Or other dimensions? Maybe Earthlings from the future?

How come space seems so lonely and devoid of intelligent life?

Probably.

Maybe. Almost certainly not.

Almost certainly not.

What? No, almost certainly not.

Beats me. Maybe. I don't think so. Even less likely than the previous.

Because we are far away from everything else and we have no means of crossing it or even communicating across cosmic distances in a timely manner.

It seems to me that most aliens (intelligent extraterrestrial life, or any extraterrestrial life) would probably be so different that we wouldn't even recognize them as such. Think about the way we perceive the world - five specific senses, some of which are barely useful, the rest of which are limited to narrow spectra - and how much of our thinking is based around those paradigms. If aliens saw objects as collections of discrete atoms rather than solid geometry as we do, would their mathematics look anything like ours?

Math is math regardless of our senses. Ditto for physics. In fact, they are hard to understand in part because once you get to a certain level (multivariate calculus, complex analysis, quantum mechanics, relativity), it becomes very difficult to relate them to our everyday lives. Of course, any aliens will almost certainly have formulated the laws differently -- even among human beings there are multiple formulations of many mathematical and scientific ideas -- but these formulations identical in substance.

With different mathematics and different sensory paradigms, would they place any significance on the electromagnetic waves that SETI sends out and listens for?

Maybe and maybe not, but SETI's main problem is that it looks for a needle in a very large haystack without even knowing what the needle looks like. Space is full of electromagnetic radiation of all types (cosmic microwave background, the steady light of stars, periodic phenomena like supernovae and pulsars, etc.). If there is a message somewhere in there in a language that we do not know, it is going to be awfully difficult to distinguish from all of the noise.