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What's your view on someone who believes Earth is being or has been visited by UFOs/UAP's

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jda Mar 2024 1:28pm, 8 Mar 2024 16,659 posts	Quote Pin jda Way easier to send mechanics rather than biologics, we'd have all sorts of satellites and drones flying around for millennia before the little green men could make the jump.
Nellers Mar 2024 2:00pm, 8 Mar 2024 42,349 posts	Quote Pin Nellers For us, maybe.
57.5 Days of Pain Mar 2024 3:31pm, 8 Mar 2024 17,383 posts	Quote Pin 57.5 Days of Pain And yes, hibernation of some sort could be workable but so could "generation ships", craft large enough to house an ecosystem that would sustain human life for an extended period where the descendants of the original crew are the ones who arrive at their destination. There's a lot of stuff that would need working out to make that work but the principles are already within our engineering and scientific abilities if we chose to do it. I would argue that while our engineering and scientific abilities are progressing we have a huge leap to make in solving the challenge of resource extraction and utilisation outside our gravity well to allow us to develop anything that could sustain an ecosystem. And our minimal knowledge of the effects of space travel on our fragile and earth attuned biology means that there will be a lot of work needed before we even know if crewed interstellar travel is possible.
57.5 Days of Pain Mar 2024 3:43pm, 8 Mar 2024 17,384 posts	Quote Pin 57.5 Days of Pain At our stage of technological knowledge the most likely way to move us towards interstellar travel would be self replicating probes. There are plenty of ways of accelerating these that have been suggested, but braking is a rather bigger problem. So it seems likely that our first contact with 'aliens' will be mechanical, and going extremely fast. 😉
Nellers Mar 2024 3:53pm, 8 Mar 2024 42,350 posts	Quote Pin Nellers There's an awful lot of refinement of our knowledge needed to make a self-sustaining ecosystem in a moving "generation ship" but it's refinement not fundamental science. All the things we would need exist and are known, at least in principle. Fine tuning that ecosystem so it didn't hit a cascade failure is the key thing but that's just about degrees and adjustment. We don't need to invent new physics to achieve that. We would just need to invest the time and financial resources to more refined research. We've got chemical rockets, mining, electronics, air purifiers, sealed greenhouse experiments etc. It's just a case of putting the time in to integrating them all. And I fully accept that it might be a lot of time and effort and expense. I'd also argue that we really don't know what the situation would be at the other end of the journey. We could very easily find a system which absolutely cannot support earth-originating life even if there's a theoretically breathable atmosphere. We've evolved to have resistance to a variety of microorganisms that exist here but we'd potentially be defenceless against bugs that don't share the earth as a cradle. Same applies in reverse for any visitors here. It was bad enough taking smallpox to the New World. Imagine what we'd take to a really New World!
57.5 Days of Pain Mar 2024 4:01pm, 8 Mar 2024 17,385 posts	Quote Pin 57.5 Days of Pain Will not be long before someone invents a warp drive and then we will be able to get all over. See what a mess we can make of the universe. This sort of speaks to the grabby aliens theory: grabbyaliens.com If alien civilizations with sufficient technology behave like humans they'll spread out everywhere and make a right mess. At some point we'll see signs of this mess and know we are not alone. We don't yet see this mess in the observable universe so therefore no other civilisation has developed far enough early enough for light to reach us with tell tale signs, and we are effectively alone.
57.5 Days of Pain Mar 2024 4:23pm, 8 Mar 2024 17,386 posts	Quote Pin 57.5 Days of Pain Generally we are in agreement Nellers, but I think humanshg currently lack two key things: 1. Any clue whether it is possible to maintain our biology in protracted space travel absent all the protections our nice little world provides. 2. A propulsion system that can apply the brakes appropriately. Then you run into the conundrum as to whether you send your mission off as soon you have answered all the questions and solved the problems, or wait for more developments that would allow you to move faster and live better. Mission 1 might not be happy being overtaken by a Mission 2 whose inhabitants are clearly having lots more fun!
Nellers Mar 2024 4:27pm, 8 Mar 2024 42,351 posts	Quote Pin Nellers Again, 57.5, we're into realms of sci-fi shorts aren't we? If you're happy with the protracted journey time chemical rockets can accelerate and decelerate a generation ship with a long drift in the middle. It just means the journey will be longer.
Nellers Mar 2024 4:28pm, 8 Mar 2024 42,352 posts	Quote Pin Nellers I mean, the Voyagers are making their way through interstellar space with just a chemical rocket start and a few gravitational slingshot boosts. Add a big enough fuel tank and you could do the same in reverse at your destination.
Dave W Mar 2024 4:40pm, 8 Mar 2024 17,318 posts	Quote Pin Dave W At some point we will see the signs. Just that they’re not close enough yet. The Universe has been around quite a while. We haven’t. Maybe they came before we knew what they were. Maybe they came and seeded the planet as an experiment. Maybe they are watching in awe of the fuck up we’re making of the planet. A lot of maybe’s in there. But isn’t maybe just a different word for theory.