Green men and squid.

[El Presidente]

Be they little green men or squid......do you believe there is intelligent life out there? (mind you I wonder if there is intelligent life on this planet some days )

The reason I asked is that I was having a cigar with a member earlier this week who was completely convinced (if not quite convincing) that aliens have always walked among us and that he had first hand experience. 

I can attest that it was a great topic to have a cigar over 

Two things crossed my mind. 

1. He was smoking a Talisman so he must have a real job. 

2. That would explain Ken. 

In all seriousness.....have you ever seen a UFO that you believed to be extraterrestrial?  Even better, have you or "a friend of a mate"  had a run in with Kang and Kodos?

Tell us your story.  

 

 

*pictures of anal probing are not permitted

[Corylax18]

Ive never had a run in with any extraterrestrials myself. But, Mathematically speaking, there is ZERO chance earth is unique within the the universe. The universe may just be too big for us to find whatever else is out there. 

[dvickery]

We are not alone

but we are lonely

 

mufon.com

derrek

[cfc1016]

Nvm. 

[Kitchen]

Personally, I believe there is life out there.  However, I also believe that intelligent life is an anomaly.  If you look at all of the billions of life forms that have lived on this planet, only we are intelligent.  

Even if a life form evolves to potentially develop intelligence, a planet must contain many attributes that would allow for that development.  (Remember, the more intelligent the life form, the more complex it is and the more susceptible to changes in the environment and, ultimately, the more bound for extinction.)  For instance, its galaxy must be filled with giant planets not so close to disrupt said planet, but close enough to draw in rouge comets and astroids that would cause a total extinction.  The planet must be big enough to retain a atmosphere, but not so big that the gravity just crushes everything.  It must have a large enough moon to stabilize the tilt; even planets in our own galaxy continuously change tilt.  A hot molten core with enough radioactive uranium to keep it molten and spinning, creating a magnetic field around the planet, deflecting the worse rays of the sun.  Far enough from the sun to create liquid water, but not so close that the water becomes steam.  The list just goes on and on.  

Even when intelligence actually evolves to the point of building things, the planet must have enough of every metal and natural resource to allow for the development of physics and the understanding of how the universe works to advance.  Can you imagine how our world would be different if we did not have the amount of copper we do, or iron, or nickel, or even gold?  Gold is used in many electronics because it does not grow whiskers when electricity is ran through it, a common problem with other metals that cause shorts in micro-boards.  If we had no gold, we would have no micro-boards; just think how different the last 50 years would have been.  There are so many factors to weigh in.  

It could be one planet in a galaxy can support intelligent life. 

[ayepatz]

I’m an alien.

I’m a legal alien.

I’m a Scottish man in New York.

[HDGSN]

Yes, I believe there is intelligent life out there somewhere in this universe, but, of course, I do not deny there could be more than one universe. There are 70 sextillion stars in the *observable* universe.  That is 70,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars.

I definitely dig stuff on the Kardashev Scale, Fermi Paradox and all of that.

[MD Puffer]

Do you mean extraterrestrial life aside from Xenu?

[garbandz]

no proof, just the feeling of being watched from afar.

 

[mt1]

Actually, there is solid proof that intelligent life does exist out there and there is proof that all life other than earth is more intelligent than us.

The reason we've never seen extraterrestrial life is because the aliens are smarter than us--all of them--because every alien that comes across our beautiful planet looks down, sees humans and what we've done to our planet and to each other over history, and is just like "nah f*** that" and promptly turns around to never come back.

[HarveyBoulevard]

51 minutes ago, FatherOfPugs said:

My belief on this can be summed up in 1 Bible verse: Genesis 1:27 "God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them."

You may disagree and that's perfectly fine. No need to give me every reason you think I'm wrong.

I agree but that doesn't mean he didn't create something/someone else...maybe just not quite the family resemblance.

[Trevor2118]

51 minutes ago, MD Puffer said:

Do you mean extraterrestrial life aside from Xenu?

Probably not Xenu........but lets not go down that track or "someone" might make it his (impossible) mission to come down on us like a ton of bricks. 

[MD Puffer]

On 12/7/2018 at 2:31 PM, Trevor2118 said:

Probably not Xenu........but lets not go down that track or "someone" might make it his (impossible) mission to come down on us like a ton of bricks. 

Cleverly stated.  

[cfc1016]

Nvm. 

[Notsocleaver]

 

1 hour ago, Corylax18 said:

Ive never had a run in with any extraterrestrials myself. But, Mathematically speaking, there is ZERO chance earth is unique within the the universe. The universe may just be too big for us to find whatever else is out there. 

A lot of smart people have claimed that, but the case has also been made that things like the Drake equation used to estimate the probability of life in the universe make some wildly optimistic assumptions: https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404

[kwsaw63]

When I was about 8 years old, there was a newspaper article that some school kids had seen a UFO and a few aliens that were about 12 inches tall. Later that same day, as I was getting ready for school (school was 1.30pm to 6pm for me back then) I heard a strange noise coming from our backyard. I went out to investigate and the noise seemed to be coming from a small rock garden that had a few shrubs and a small tree, bordering a lattice like brick wall.

As I neared the rock garden I saw a flash of movement and what I thought looked like one of the aliens described in the newspaper article running into the rock garden. Whatever it was, it ducked through the wall through one of the lattice openings and disappeared to the other side. I bent down to look through the opening and as I did so, a twig flew through the opening and struck the side of my face. I then heard the strange noise again. When I went over to the other side of the wall, there was nothing to be seen.

So did I see an alien? Perhaps....I never really got a good look at whatever was in my backyard but the key thing for me was the fact that the twig flew horizontally through the opening and did not fall down from a tree, so something threw it at me. I never told anyone about it at the time, as I had no evidence and I didn’t want to be labeled a hysterical schoolboy whose overactive imagination had been activated by the newspaper article. So what do you guys think I saw?

[SirVantes]

1. There is only one universe & there are only 3 spatial dimensions (+ time) = the maths is highly persuasive that we are not alone.

2. There is only one universe & there are higher dimensions, as string theory would suggest = there may be beings in higher dimensions, forever inaccessible to our senses, sitting around munching popcorn, watching us screw up.  Impossible to know.

3. There is a multiverse, and we consider every universe in the multiverse the "out there" = there's definitely life somewhere out there.

4. There is a multiverse, and we consider only our universe as the "out there" = if all outcomes are possible in the multiverse, then maybe our universe is a universe where we are alone, nevermind the maths?

Having said all that, I've definitely had run-ins with beings from Planet A*sehole.

[Fuzz]

2 hours ago, SirVantes said:

1. There is only one universe & there are only 3 spatial dimensions (+ time) = the maths is highly persuasive that we are not alone.

2. There is only one universe & there are higher dimensions, as string theory would suggest = there may be beings in higher dimensions, forever inaccessible to our senses, sitting around munching popcorn, watching us screw up.  Impossible to know.

3. There is a multiverse, and we consider every universe in the multiverse the "out there" = there's definitely life somewhere out there.

4. There is a multiverse, and we consider only our universe as the "out there" = if all outcomes are possible in the multiverse, then maybe our universe is a universe where we are alone, nevermind the maths?

Having said all that, I've definitely had run-ins with beings from Planet A*sehole.

Pretty sure our universe is "Universe B". Has a "B" kinda feel to it...

 

[gweilgi]

7 hours ago, Kitchen said:

Personally, I believe there is life out there.  However, I also believe that intelligent life is an anomaly.  If you look at all of the billions of life forms that have lived on this planet, only we are intelligent.  

Prove it.
?

Seriously, though: it may be a hallmark of intelligent life to instantly outcompete and exterminate other intelligent competition.  It is what Homo Sapiens did -- we were not the only species of thinking ape to evolve on this ball of mud, we are simply the last one left standing.

 

7 hours ago, Kitchen said:

Even if a life form evolves to potentially develop intelligence, a planet must contain many attributes that would allow for that development.  (Remember, the more intelligent the life form, the more complex it is and the more susceptible to changes in the environment and, ultimately, the more bound for extinction.)  For instance, its galaxy must be filled with giant planets not so close to disrupt said planet, but close enough to draw in rouge comets and astroids that would cause a total extinction.  The planet must be big enough to retain a atmosphere, but not so big that the gravity just crushes everything.  It must have a large enough moon to stabilize the tilt; even planets in our own galaxy continuously change tilt.  A hot molten core with enough radioactive uranium to keep it molten and spinning, creating a magnetic field around the planet, deflecting the worse rays of the sun.  Far enough from the sun to create liquid water, but not so close that the water becomes steam.  The list just goes on and on.  

Is this not why astronomers are looking for planets in the so-called Goldilocks Zone?  With a search area as big as the observable universe, it makes sense to restrict ourselves to looking for planets (and evidence of life on those planets) which we know for a fact can support life.  And we keep finding them. 

 

7 hours ago, Kitchen said:

Even when intelligence actually evolves to the point of building things, the planet must have enough of every metal and natural resource to allow for the development of physics and the understanding of how the universe works to advance.  Can you imagine how our world would be different if we did not have the amount of copper we do, or iron, or nickel, or even gold?  Gold is used in many electronics because it does not grow whiskers when electricity is ran through it, a common problem with other metals that cause shorts in micro-boards.  If we had no gold, we would have no micro-boards; just think how different the last 50 years would have been.  There are so many factors to weigh in.  

It could be one planet in a galaxy can support intelligent life. 

Intelligence does not in itself require technology as proof.  A pre-Contact Plains tribesman or Neolithic Celtic farmer would have been no more and no less intelligent than the average person living today.  By the same token, I would not expect the average crew member of an alien spacecraft visiting Earth to be a towering genius in comparison with a representative sample of humanity (obviously, an active subscription to the instagram channel of the Kardashians would be instant disqualification).  Lack of suitable resources may impede or halt technological development, but would not stop the ability to think.  

[RDB]

When you look up into the sky, almost every point of light you can see with the naked eye is a nearby star in our galaxy. There are around 100bn stars in the milky way: we only see a tiny fraction. Then our galaxy is one of at least 100bn galaxies in the universe.

We’re now discovering planets all the time, including many in the Goldilocks zone where water is liquid and lots of organic chemistry seems to happen. Seems pretty certain to me there’s life out there, and highly likely that it has evolved in some places. Of course we’re not the only intelligent life in earth, just the most successful in certain obvious ways (and the most destructive by far).

On the other hand... getting people out of our own solar system seems to be a seriously hard challenge due to the energy and time requirements. Plus we have to avoid exhausting our planetary resources, terminally screwing up our environment, or wiping ourselves out in a poisonous conflict.

Any other life form would face the same challenges. So it seems much more likely to me that we see some evidence of intelligent life, like a distinctive signal, than meeting the little green guys in person.

[anacostiakat]

The X-Files confirmed we are not alone.

The truth is out there! 

 

[Fuzz]

5 minutes ago, RDB said:

Any other life form would face the same challenges. So it seems much more likely to me that we see some evidence of intelligent life, like a distinctive signal, than meeting the little green guys in person.

Assuming that any alien life form has the same limitations as humans.

[gweilgi]

To refer to one of the most venerated philosophers of the modern age, M. Python Esq:


(spoken)
Whenever life gets you down, Mrs. Brown, 
And things seem hard or tough, 
And people are stupid, obnoxious or daft, 
(sung) 
And you feel that you've had quite eno-o-o-o-o-ough, 
 
Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving 
And revolving at 900 miles an hour. 
It's orbiting at 19 miles a second, so it's reckoned, 
The sun that is the source of all our power. 
Now the sun, and you and me, and all the stars that we can see, 
Are moving at a million miles a day, 
In the outer spiral arm, at 40,000 miles an hour, 
Of a galaxy we call the Milky Way. 
 
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars; 
It's a hundred thousand light-years side to side; 
It bulges in the middle sixteen thousand light-years thick, 
But out by us it's just three thousand light-years wide. 
We're thirty thousand light-years from Galactic Central Point, 
We go 'round every two hundred million years; 
And our galaxy itself is one of millions of billions 
In this amazing and expanding universe. 
 
(waltz) 
 
Our universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding, 
In all of the directions it can whiz; 
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know, 
Twelve million miles a minute and that's the fastest speed there is. 
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure, 
How amazingly unlikely is your birth; 
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space, 
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth! 

 

[Auspaul]

Sitting in my pool some years back on a warm summers night looking at the stars I saw what I thought was the space station very bright like a ball of burning magnesium was watching it approach. I am under the flight path and a plane was coming as it got closer I thought this is going to block the view of the space station. Once the plane went past I realised the light went under the plane then it went from a straight trajectory turned to a sweeping arc went faster turned orange and then vanished . That was the end of swimming at nigh time by myself was a very weird feeling mate of mine saw the same thing a few weeks later was pretty scary would have only been 100metres in the air probably less than a meter round wish I had a video

 

[Ryan]

I like this quote from Arthur C. Clarke

"Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”

I'm not sure if it matters, the problems are distance and time. The universe is nearly 14 billion years old.

Humans have been around for 100,000 - 200,000 years.

Yet less than three years after we first managed to get something into space, the German V2 Rocket in 1942, we developed the means to destroy the planet and everything on it, with nuclear weapons. Both of these created to kill as many of us as possible.

What I'm saying is, I'm not sure if intelligent (technological) species last long enough to get anywhere.

At the moment, things could be looking better for us than they are.