Who believes in Aliens?

[B55B55]

To quote men much smarter than I:

'And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth.'

Ah monty python, an insperation to us all.

Personaly I think that an understanding of the scale of the universe is an important thing here.
I mean experiments have benn conducted to show that on any planet that is "earth like" single celled organisms will develop by themselves.
So even ignoring the immense likelyhood that life developing elsewhere would have a significantly differnent basic composition from us (non carbon based etc), there have to be literally billions of planets that have at some point developed single celled organizims. To think that none of them have developed beyond that is improbable.

At the same time the idea that any other species of comparable inteligence developed in an area cloce enough for us to find them, (at least at our current levle of technology) is ridiculous. Especialy given that earth is not in a very dencely populated corner of the universe. Life is rare, it's only the massive size of the universe that keeps it occuring again and again.

That being said I strongly doubt that anyone on earth has had extraterrestrial experiences. Aside from people obviously faking things (crop circles -- alien autopsy video), there valid psychological explanations for why people might beleive that they were contacted or abducted by aliens. Amoung other things humans are highly suggestible. You may notice that aliens "Seen" by people having these experiences begin to converge upon a depiction that is generated from popular culture.

In particular the Barny and Betty hill story, one of the most well known of the stories, almost exactly coppies an alien that was days earlier depicted in the show, The Outer Limits.

Also, becasue humans are highly suggestable it's easy to re-enforce the belief you were abducted. For example, If "Bob" has an experience, or a dream or something that he thinks might be alien related, he'll go and talk to someone who he thinks knows about aliens. That person will subconciously really want the experience to be real. The unconcious desier to please in "Bob" will re-enforce his believe in the experience. This is especialy true with people going to thereapists who are strong believers in alien abduction.

[Asthaloth]

you seem to have missed the point of the ferme paradox.
telescopes right now are seeing farther into the past the further we look into space, we should see SOMETHING, we should hear ANYTHING from these distant places.
if superior aliens have swept across the universe in a wave of colinisation we should see SOMETHING, not a few snipers guarding an apparently empty bit of nuclear irradiated wasteland (theres somthing at "area 51" just not aliens, and i dont give a damn what my brother says about statements being changed an hour after being made, or radio contact being lost, or supersonic swamp gas)
but...nothing, nadder, zilch, sqaut, diddly,

Especialy given that earth is not in a very dencely populated corner of the universe

so a galaxy colliding with us, and two star clusters doing likwise aint "dense" enough for ya?

still, as my faviroute maxim goes; it matters not what you want, life has a funny habit of ramming it down yer throat in ironic ways.
so be expecting a shivan/borg/cylon/gua'ald whatever warfleet to arrive sometime soon and enslave/assimilate/obbliterate/exterminate/ whatever us sometime tommorow

[kamehameha0]

I had a friend who dissapeared for three days, and when he was found, starved in a shed, he said he was abducted by a cyrptozoological creature. It matched the description of an alien, or atleast the kind of alien other people who claim to have been abducted looked like. I'm not entirely sure if he was lying or not, but I do know, there is life out there, and visited us many times. There is too much evidence to not believe in it. I have aqauintences with a few people who have written books on cryptozoology and paranormal phenonoma.

[Asthaloth]

ah cryptozooology; the refuge of the weak willed.

[Articfox]

The idea of abductions to me is one of the dumbest theorie to come to thought, after apparently beaming people up for experiments since the dawn of human time you'd think these aliens would know everything they need to know by now. And I have a feeling all abducted people have serious mental issue, they make everything sound so casual: "I was driving down a dirt road in the backwoods about 4 in the morning, then a bright light shown in my face then I woke up in the middle of the ground with a device on the back of my neck..." Why the heck are all abducted people wanderin g around in the middle of a corn field in the wee hours of the morning, ah whatever.

[simsman24000]

Who believes in aliens?

My creepy 9th grade English teacher believes she was abducted and that her husband still lives with her (he lives in India), so... I can safely say that she does.

[B55B55]

you seem to have missed the point of the ferme paradox.
telescopes right now are seeing farther into the past the further we look into space, we should see SOMETHING, we should hear ANYTHING from these distant places.
if superior aliens have swept across the universe in a wave of colinisation we should see SOMETHING, not a few snipers guarding an apparently empty bit of nuclear irradiated wasteland (theres somthing at "area 51" just not aliens, and i dont give a damn what my brother says about statements being changed an hour after being made, or radio contact being lost, or supersonic swamp gas)
but...nothing, nadder, zilch, sqaut, diddly,

Especialy given that earth is not in a very dencely populated corner of the universe

so a galaxy colliding with us, and two star clusters doing likwise aint "dense" enough for ya?

You mean the Fermi Paradox?

For the benifit of the conversation

The commonly held belief that the universe has many technologically advanced civilizations combined with our observations that suggest otherwise, is paradoxical, suggesting that either our understanding or our observations are flawed or incomplete.

The main example of this is the fact that we, as a species "Should" be recieving radio transmissions from other species -- some form of semi-regualar interference and we haven't found any. There are a lot of arguments for and against the fermi paradox, and it is something intersting to keep in mind while having this discussion -- i'm glad someone brought it up.

There are several solutions for the fermi paradox, one of them is that no other sapient life exists in the universe. On the other hand there is the argument (dubious that it may be) that aliens are already amoung us. This is the refutation of the fermi paradox that people believing in ufo abudctions use. Under this argument beings that are inteligent enough to get here are also inteligent enough to hide.

There are other explanations however. The main one being that there have been inteligent lifeforms who for some reason haven't communicated with us. They are deliberatly or accidentaly "hiding". Deliberatly could of course be to protect us (think star trek prime directive) or to protect themselves as if we can see them other less friendly speices could too.

Accidentaly hiding could have a lot to do with the fact that we could be recieving those transmisions and not recognising them. This is especialy true do to the effectof compression on signals. The greater the degree of compression the closer the message seems to noise.

Inteligent species, since we live for a relitively short time frame on a universal scale could also be extreamly rare and only exist too far apart in time or space to ever meet.

Additionaly broadcast technologies(ie radio tv) are not effiecent. They waste energy and they send the signal to a lot of places that it dosen't need to go. A society more advanced than ours could easily not do a significant amout of long range general broacasting. That would mean that other societies would only be detectable during the narrow period between the discovery of radio and the conversion to more effiecnt tech. Earth itself is heading quickly in this direction and soon could be in a state where we ourselves couldn't be detected through these means.

There are also other solutions.

I've heard that what was in area 51 was test planes, military test planes, which explains most of the secrecy and some of the "alien sightings"

The portion of our galaxy that we're in is sparsely populated in relation to the rest of the galaxy. We're out on one of the arms of a spiral galaxy, as opposed to say, in the center where stars are clocer together. I wouldn't say that's necessarily a bad thing -- but it does mean that there arn't any other solar systems within range of our current technology (at least not in a reasonable time frame)

[Asthaloth]

i was given the ferme spelling, but thats irrelivent.
as for aliens hiding, i put forth the "zoo theory"
that mankind is contained within a massive zoo, light years across.
lets just hope no-one sends a SOL signal to the edge and causes it to collapse eh?
still, im going to go watch the "snow channel" see a bit of the big bang.

[Paul]

There is no real scienctific definition of 'life' so drawing a conclusion whether there is 'life' on other planets, in other galaxies is impossible.

[Sock]

Weird thing is if they wanted to kill us they woyuld've done a long time ago......right? Remends me of the new show 'The 4400'..../..

What if they don't WANT to kill us?

I don't know what I believe about them. ^^; I mean, I think there was life on other planets at some point. I just don't know if there still is or not.

[*Chellie]

The movie Signs has seriously given a new meaning to alien for me...actually no not really.

Yes I believe there are aliens out there and that they have visited upon the earth at one point in time or another.Most people rule out aliens because there isn't much proof (if any) that they actually exist, but thats where belief comes in.Just because there is no proof of somethig it doesn't mean it isn't out there, kinda of like when we 'discover' a new species of animal, I mean why can't we 'discover' aliens...but thats just what I think.

[Articfox]

Even though I think the odds make for an impossibility, if there was life, the only way we probably wouldn't be able to detect it is....

1. They are either so far from Earth in the universe that it would take billions of years just for the signals top reach us.

2. Or that they arn't a highly advanced race, and are quite primitive and devoid of anything powerful enough or nothing at all that could send signals through space.

Thats my only two conclusions of there being life. And we not being able to detect it.

[Asthaloth]

or the Zoo theory ofcourse.
and im still waiting on that war/colony/whathaveyou fleet.

[Articfox]

or the Zoo theory ofcourse.
and im still waiting on that war/colony/whathaveyou fleet.

If real, the zoo theory is frightning nontheless. But doesn't seem to matter much being that they havn't interfeared with our lives rellly at all, so it woud be quite mundain to go about watching our civilization thrive and watch it collapse, which it will do I'm positive of some time in thr future.

But it would be quite interesting from there perspective, even though I don't excactly see why they would want to.