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

[Ser Greguh]

The nearest probe-spammer might be over in Andromeda Galaxy.

And probe-spamming might run into hard physical limits that no species can overcome to the point where they can reach out any significant distance, no matter their level of technology.

[Spring Bass]

And probe-spamming might run into hard physical limits that no species can overcome to the point where they can reach out any significant distance, no matter their level of technology.

I suspect that's a possibility as well. All of the proposed methods for interstellar travel are highly speculative, and going super-slow means you get stuck with keeping a highly complex starship functioning for centuries or millenia in deep space.

[thecryptile]

To me a more interesting question is why did so many ancient civilizations across the world from each other all build pyramids?

I believe that the pyramids are symbolic representations of mountains. Before the rise of civilizations, shamans and prophets would seek out mountaintops as a place to commune with their gods. The pyramid/ziggurat/mound is an attempt to bring the sacred mountains closer for the convenience of the new civilized priestly caste.

Because they weren't good enough engineers to build really tall monuments with straight walls. Piling stone in a heap is much easier.

This too. If the ancient engineers were more skilled, perhaps they would have pioneered the sky scraper.

[Pero the first of His name]

To me a more interesting question is why did so many ancient civilizations across the world from each other all build pyramids?

Because it is obviously the most noob way to make a high building

[straits]

What if every advance civilization gains so much control over its own neuronal wiring they disappear into manufactured virtual realities?

Or they rewire themselves and everything turns to shit?

Maybe that's why we've never been contacted?

That's the problem. It is highly unlikely that every civilization converges to that lifestyle. All we need is one exception to this "rule", and we would have on our hands a civilization that has had enough time to spread across the galaxy. And there should be more than one.

And the most plausible explanation IMO is that we haven't had transmission capability for long enough (the time window between sending a message of our own, and receiving one, is still too small). It would take thousands of years for the alien life form to notice us, and by then it may be too late. Or vice versa.

[WakeTheDragon]

People deceiving themselves on the basis of dubious or incomplete visual evidence is also a human universal. Forget 0.01%, 0% of these so-called sightings are actually documented (by which I mean evidence that is rigorous).

Huh? There's been thousands of documented UFO sightings.

[thecryptile]

Project Blue Book concluded that UFO sightings are pretty much all natural phenomena like ball lightning and fox fire.

[IheartTesla]

Huh? There's been thousands of documented UFO sightings.

If you take UFOs to mean unidentified objects at the time of sighting, then yes. But the actual number of out of world objects of non-natural design (which I colloquially assumed to be UFOs) is a big fat 0.

[Nas!]

big fat 0.

So, space ships are ovular?

[Le Dragone]

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?

We know that there is no intelligent life close to us, or somewhere we can get to in a lifetime. The closest planets that we think are habitable are thousands of light years away. And while traveling at speeds close to the speed of light is theoretically possible, the energy required to do that makes economically prohibitive.

So if there is intelligent life out there, chances are we're never going to them, and they're never coming to us. Unless of course the warp drive becomes reality.

[A wilding]

We know that there is no intelligent life close to us, or somewhere we can get to in a lifetime. The closest planets that we think are habitable are thousands of light years away.

Yes to the first (barring FTL), no to the second. We are not yet very good at finding goldilocks planets, we are mostly just spotting large planets very close to their star. Though I think it is still considered possible that there may be a goldilocks planet in the Gliese system, only 20 LY away.

[Olvyr]

As far as pyramids/ziggurats go, they're pretty much the "easiest" way to build high structures. They're pretty damn stable once you've figured out certain construction principles. Now, that's not to say that the features of most of these buildings throughout the world are pretty impressive (chambers, tunnels, accoustics etc) but you have to consider that the leaders at those times had 2 things in near-unlimited supply: manpower and time. Just the same as gothic cathedrals: One could wonder how they were built, given medieval techniques and all, but imagine, today no architect would undertake the construction of a building of which they were sure they'd never see completion within their lifetime!

Which brings me full circle to spacefaring: Which government/nation would dare to initiate a serious space-program (building a ship for example) which would take 50-100 years before it could even start. Most politicians don't even think any further than their term of election.

Face it, we just lack the balls nowadays to sit down and say "Let's do this!"

O'm pretty sure life exists out there somewhere. Iirc we know of about 10^22 stars in the visible universe (give or take a few billions) so some of them are bound to have planets in the life-supporting zone. Is it intelligent life? Who knows, maybe? Humanoid? Possibly? Do they visit us? Unlikely, except if they're so far more advanced than us that they have the means to travel at near lightspeed or through wormholes (if they exist) because the laws of physics are universal....

Sorry for my lengthy post, I can understand if some tl;dr

[IheartTesla]

So, space ships are ovular?

Yes, like the saucer section of the Enterprise.

Speaking of which, apparently the whole Enterprise design is based off the grill you have in your kitchen stove. You know, with the coils on top that have the spherical-ish shape, and the electrical connectors that look a bit like the detachable section.

[Sci-2]

On the larger question of aliens...if we're going to accept the phenomena relating to sightings & abductions as pointing to genuine phenomena, it seems to me the "ultra-terrestrial" hypothesis is more plausible than the extra-terrestrial one.

Steven Mizrach has a good article about this in Paranthropology Vol 4, Issue 2.

This issue begins with a comprehensive overview of UFO research from an anthropological perspective, by Steven Mizrach titled “The Para-Anthropology of UFO Abductions: The Case for the UTH.” UTH (Ultraterrestrial Hypothesis) is Mizrach's alternative to the “nuts and bolts” approach of UFO sightings and the crash sites of alien spaceships, and those who are totally skeptical of UFO's.

UTH offers anthropologists of consciousness an opportunity to reexamine UFO research as a transpersonal way of knowing. Although controversial, the UTH thesis is heuristic and worth consideration as an invitation to n-dimensional knowing.

eta: Just to be clear, here's my actual answer on the subject.

[S John]

The more we learn about our universe the more it seems that we cannot possibly be alone. The vastness is unfathomable. I think the possibilities are limitless and that includes the possibility that we have been visited or observed.

Think of how our technology has advanced over a very short time span. We have the tendency to be arrogant as a species and think that we currently are able to conceive what kinds of technologies will be possible in the future and therefore dismiss things that seem impossible today... but the bar for that is always moving. We have things that were unthinkable 100 years ago, and that will be the case again 100 years from now.

With that in mind, think about if we could send a satellite back in time to orbit the Earth whose mission was to observe major events in human history and somehow transmit them back to the present time. Those people being observed would have no fucking idea that they were being observed by us because they have no concept of a satellite and they cannot observe it directly. So what makes us think that there aren't other civilizations, million or billions of years more advanced than ours, capable of observing/visiting us without the possibility of our detection? I don't think that is what is going on, but that seems pretty damn possible to me, all things considered.

I mean... did aliens help build the pyramids and go around abducting people? I don't think so. But are we maybe on some radars out there? That would not surprise me.

[Nas!]

You are so fucking high right now, John. Admit it.

[S John]

You are so fucking high right now, John. Admit it.

Nasrudin, this isn't about me.

[Nas!]

Nasrudin, this isn't about me.

Of course it is. Look more closely at the situation, my friend, and you will see thousands of tiny cracks. Look more closely: do you see the light of The Almighty shining through these cracks? Good! Now let your mind push your spirit through the space between 'things' and into the beautiful light of Truth!

Awesome, no?

[Sci-2]

Growing up alien: John Mack was a Harvard scientist who took extra-terrestrial abduction seriously. Is he the reason I like misfits?

...To his enemies, he was a crackpot, fraud, and a cheat. And to his patients, and many of his friends, he was a source of support, an open listener, a sage and protector.

Dr John E Mack was many things to many people. A Harvard-trained psychiatrist, tenured professor, and one of the founders of the Cambridge Hospital Department of Psychiatry (a teaching hospital affiliated with Harvard University), John held an impressive command and was respected in his field. After an early career spent working on issues of child development and identity formation, he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1977 for his psychoanalytic biography of Lawrence of Arabia, entitled A Prince of Our Disorder (1976). Then, in the late 1980s, John put his reputation on the line when he started investigating the phenomenon of alien abduction...

...But if I reflect on the impact of my childhood experience, I think it left me with a profound openness, and a generous ear. John taught me the power of listening; really hearing people out and having the courage and resilience to question established orthodoxies. I still remain entirely agnostic about the existence of aliens. I have a commitment to preserving unknowns, and I thrive on ambiguity and complexity in my work and my relationships. John’s legacy has also left me with a certain reverence for misfits, for outliers and challengers of the status quo: for the type of person who walks the line between delusion and insight.

John, too, remains immortalised in my mind as someone with great courage and empathy...

[SpaceChampion]

Yes to the first (barring FTL), no to the second. We are not yet very good at finding goldilocks planets, we are mostly just spotting large planets very close to their star. Though I think it is still considered possible that there may be a goldilocks planet in the Gliese system, only 20 LY away.

Gliese is a catalogue of several thousand stars within 25 parsecs of Sol. (That's more than two whole Kessel runs!)

To refer to a specific Gliese system you need the number following it.