It's a great discussion guys. It really is, and I'm enjoying it immensely.
I don't put my 2c worth in because it isn't a topic on which I consider myself "informed".
My personal view is that aliens exist. I just think that odds that the millions of planets that exist in the universe are all completely uninhabited are.....well pretty damn long. We also have a very narrow view of what constitutes "life"....just because we can't comprehend life that has no.physical form etc doesn't mean it cannot exist......which leads me to my next observation.
It seems the answers provided by most alien visitation believers to challenges from the scientific community almost always involve a large element of "well prove me wrong then"......much like when some players firmly believe someone from the casino is watching their every bet and changing the reels on a constant basis......and this is what concerns me most. I've been reading this thread and the links, and I still don't think there is any even quasi-concrete evidence to support alien visitation theories.
I think Roy argues his points very well, and skiny equally, but I still get the underlying message of "well, yeah, the proof isn't solid, but prove it doesn't happen"......which isn't the way to go if you're the one putting the theory forward. Mind you, that's just my take on it, and its nothing personal, as I see it is most CT discussions.
Anyway, I'm no expert as I said, but some questions do come into my head and they have never been able to be answered. One is why those abducted by aliens all seem to be from remote places and have few teeth, and are almost always known previously as unreliable....and almost always from low socio-economic groups? It seems odd that aliens would only want to study these people. What about important people in government or military positions, and city dwellers etc? I know if the chairman of the JCS in the US came up with an abduction story it would carry a lot more credibility, In fact, nobody reliable ever seems to be abducted. I've been told that the aliens know that nobody will believe these people, so they can carry on unimpeded, but then if they were so well informed about our social structures etc, they wouldn't need to abduct alcoholics and hillbillies,because they would already know that they represent one section of humanity.
I have others, like why things need to be shoved up abducted people's bums when you would safely assume they would have scanning capabilities far beyond our own.
A lot of it makes no sense, and just because something cannot be explained, doesn't mean it is alien.
Well that's my 2c worth that I said I wouldn't give. My mind is still open, so carry on.
You make very valid points Nifty...
I for one, do not believe in Crop Circles. Why on earth would Aliens leave messages in the Corn? Even if they did, surely they would understand that not everyone is up in the sky all the time...?
We have SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) operating for years and yet to receive any communication from the depths of the universe.
I must admit that despite any argument put forward, I find it IMPOSSIBLE to believe that foreign technology has not graced our planet as yet. We as a 'Technologically Primitive' society have been deploying probes into space and sending them to other planets... Why isn't it logical that another species could send a similar or more advanced craft to Earth to Explore?
We have officials from all around the world who share first hand accounts, Pilots, Astronauts, Governors, Generals and yet their stories are always pushed away like they do not exist.
I believe there are more hoaxes than real accounts; however, there is so much that remains unexplained. Skiny makes valid points concerning Websites dedicated to this stuff. I rarely visit them as I know that 99% of the stuff contained on those sites are fabricated. I'm not easily convinced BUT I do a lot of research on the matter and take everything into account.
The first two Videos I posted in this thread are some of the BEST stories documented to date. its sad that nobody took the time to comment on them. I believe the evidence contained in those videos are enough to make anyone ponder what the truth really is.
Nate
Not singling anyone out here but generally speaking, I think the thing that most people who believe in extraterrestrial visitations don't seem to grasp is the vastness of space and the limits of speed and time. I find it difficult to believe that other alien races can do what we believe to be physically impossible. I'm not talking about technology. If we took some of our current technology even back 100 years it would be beyond comprehension. If we took most of it back 300 years it would be witchcraft.
But what has advanced just as quickly as our technology is our understanding of how the universe works. Just as electricity and magnetism are two sides of a single coin, space and time are connected, velocity and mass are connected. Energy, mass and acceleration are a vicious circle. The more an object accelerates, the more mass it gains, the more mass it gains the more energy it takes to accelerate it. Even a single proton would take an infinite amount of energy to reach light speed. This is true for everything in the universe with mass.
Now, personally I'm going under the assumption that an alien race would require a planet near a sun to evolve. The closest star to us is about 4 light years away. There's 3 of them actually and two of them are part of a binary system and after that they start to range between 6 to 10 light years away and beyond. Even traveling at half the speed of light it would take about 10 years to get to the closest star, that's a one way trip at about 500 million kilometers per hour. I'm not even going to mention the amount of energy it would take to accelerate even a tiny craft to 500 million kph. I think the Mars Rover topped out at about 20,000 kph. 1/25000th of our desired speed and it carried a craft about the size of a Mini Cooper.
Now since we're talking about actual aliens visiting you have to put some sort of species on the craft which opens a whole new can of worms. How do you get a human (or alien) up to 500 million kph? Well, If you give yourself a month to achieve that speed and you're a very small human or alien you can keep the g-force down to about the same as an extreme rollercoaster ride. (Maybe around 3g) Which makes for a rather uncomfortable 30 days. Or you can give yourself a year and comfortably accelerate to half the speed of light but then you'll need a similar amount of time to decelerate and that's not counting the problem of navigation. You could sit quite comfortably in a craft at 500 million kph and if the speed and direction was constant you could even get up and walk around. The problem is that even the slightest change in direction would fling everything and everyone in the craft in the opposite direction. A car traveling at 100 kph changes lanes too fast and you spill your coffee. Imagine trying to turn even slightly at 500,000 times that speed. Even if you plotted a constant arc from point A to point B with the minimum curve the passengers in the craft with feel a constant g- force in the opposite direction of the curve for the entire duration of the trip. Inertia is a bitch.
And I didn't bother with the amount of energy it takes to accelerate earlier because of the amount of energy it takes to sustain the crew for the trip. Any species is going to require a renewable source of oxygen, carbon dioxide, helium or what ever it breathes, a food supply either stored or renewed, a navigation system, lights, heat, communication for 10 years each way and that is just to the nearest star. To get to the next batch of stars after that, double everything I just said.
This is part of why I don't believe aliens have visited earth. I've never believed that we are alone in the universe or even that we are the only intelligent species. The problem is that any other species in the universe (unless they are subatomic particles) are bound by the same Newtonian laws of physics as we are regardless of their technology.
I could probably write an entire book on why I think it's simply not possible for an intelligent alien species to get from there to here and why the odds are almost zero that they would evolve within 100 or even 1000 light years of us, much less 4 or 10 but I've just bored you with 3 or 4 paragraphs of it. Imagine reading a hundred pages.
Lol... I see where you are going with this - I think we touched base on it earlier in the thread... hence my absence thus far.
People have strong views. Some are more willing to believe than others. I see that you take the 'seeing is believing' route and I have no issues with that. Your explanations are logical and make complete sense, however given the almost infinite size of the Universe, I'm sure you could appreciate WHY I absolutely feel that its possible for a multitude of intelligent species to exist and it may be more common than we think.
If I re-emphasize my point from earlier, we would be going in circles. I do not believe it is difficult for intelligent life to have evolved. My perception is that it exists and we have been visited - I suppose its just about when we will eventually see the truth coming out...
Are you trying to overthrow VWM btw ?
Nate
@Skiny - You make genuine and thought provoking statements. Your logic is spot on ad I agree that it is a sweeping statement when I use the 'infinite' universe as an example. My thought process is upon the lines of ... IF we could have progressed this far with technology since the 1940's (I still say our technology is primitive given my beliefs) then how far could an intelligent species like us (lets say they hypothetically exist) have progressed IF they were to have just a 1000 year head start on us?
Who says that if other beings need to travel, that they must do at the speed of light? What about wormholes and other means of travel. Although its just pie in the sky, scientists still theorise that its possible, even if we do not understand it. Why does everything need to conform to OUR perception of physics? Why does everything need to conform to OUR recipe for life or the maintenance thereof? Why is Neptunes Moon orbiting in the opposite direction? There are new discoveries being made regularly and most of them defy the rules of physics as we interpret them .... The point I'm making is that there are anomalies scattered all over the universe and everything does not conform to how we interpret it should be
Nate
What Nate said regarding wormholes, our own particle accelerators are possible of creating these, but, not to the extent that would be needed for space travel (apparently), also skiny there was a series on B.B.C. that I watched when it was on, I cannot remember if this was the programme that had Stephen Hawkins in, but he also speaks of these, the Horizon series is well worth watching ....