UFOs "Real" Says Former Astronaut.

[Distortio]

You would think so. But the size of the universe means the odds of them visiting us are er....astronomical.

 

i like those odds... if i stick a quid on and they visit do i win the universe?

[Guest Anonymous]

Maybe it's time dat da Auld Een took his simple minded luik at da universe, an da notion dat idder craetirs mich veesit wis.

 

OK, in English for simplicity:

 

If we look at Earth history over the last couple of hundred years we find that man has gone from traveling at walking speed on the ground, to thousands of miles per hour in space. How fast and far will man be capable of traveling in another couple of hundred years? Two hundred years ago the simple concept of traveling as fast as man is now capable of was just science fiction. So in another 200 years, given the same advance in technology, it is possible that man will reach the stars, and what we consider to be science fiction at the moment, will in fact be a reality.

 

Now, what if there are other populated planets millions of light years away, and what if they are a couple of hundred years more advanced than we are today. Isn't it just feasible that they are floating around our skies and having a look at us.

 

Methinks it's only the severe superiority complex of man that makes us think we are the most evolved species in the universe.

 

Weel yun's whit I tink.

[MaxFusion]

I'm with you Rasmie, dat maks sence

[Evil Inky]

Now, what if there are other populated planets millions of light years away, and what if they are a couple of hundred years more advanced than we are today. Isn't it just feasible that they are floating around our skies and having a look at us.

They would have had to travel millions of light years in less than two hundred years: doesn't sound feasible to me

[Njugle]

Aah, but just think how big their hadron collider is, and what they've been flinging round it. Perhaps whole buses.

 

Stargate was a documentary, wasn't it?

[Spinner72]

Now, what if there are other populated planets millions of light years away, and what if they are a couple of hundred years more advanced than we are today. Isn't it just feasible that they are floating around our skies and having a look at us.

They would have had to travel millions of light years in less than two hundred years: doesn't sound feasible to me

 

Thats exactly Rasmie's point. If you had said 200 years ago that people would be travelling back and forth around the world on a daily basis flying at around 1000mph while eating dennir and havin a dram, would that have seemed feasible?

[Fjool]

^ Although it's hard to grasp just how truly enormous a light-year really is. Yes, there might be technologies which shorten the distances involved - or some such - but millions of light-years are unlikely to become a simple journey. Would be great to be wrong on this point, btw

 

Combine this with the fact that you're essentially talking about looking for bacteria upon a single grain of sand, upon many millions of beaches. It's a big search.

 

There's always coincidence I suppose.

[MaxFusion]

mite be a big search but it'll never rule out possibility.....

they said we'd never see another planet outside this solar system too

but there's pictures out there now!

 

as for space travel...well we all know you need "the spice" for that

[Evil Inky]

Thats exactly Rasmie's point. If you had said 200 years ago that people would be travelling back and forth around the world on a daily basis flying at around 1000mph while eating dennir and havin a dram, would that have seemed feasible?

I think there's a much bigger gap between where we are now and Star Trek style faster than light travel than there was between primitive balloons and 747s. The existence of birds would have shown our ancestors that powered flight was possible to some extent, but right now all indications suggest that faster than light travel will never be possible.

[MaxFusion]

it's been said before but....todays Science fiction is tomorows science fact

 

maybe if we all stopped going to war with each other and colaborated on space travel we'd be way farther ahead than we are now

[Spinner72]

Very true - but then without the wars where would people get the money.. (but thats another thread)

 

What often happens in discussions lke these is to slip, as i did back there, into placing a timescale on things.

 

The fact is that it would be as much, if not more, of a coincidence for other beings we could interact with in some form to exist at the same time as us, let alone be able to travel to find each other.

 

But to think evolution has only ever taken place on this one little speck is, frankly, a bit silly.

[Fjool]

maybe if we all stopped going to war with each other and colaborated on space travel we'd be way farther ahead than we are now

Undoubtedly! Oh but for the cooperation and desire to better ourselves rather than warmongering. The things we could achieve! Consider that the LHC cost about £5bn (I think), which is about 0.5% of the amount spent in Iraq so far....

 

Still, it's not by any means a given that 'todays Science fiction is tomorows science fact'. There are some things which I'm pretty sure we'll never achieve. You must read some pretty tame sci-fi

 

But to think evolution has only ever taken place on this one little speck is, frankly, a bit silly.

Statistically, it's pretty much a certainty that life exists elsewhere. Whether they're even in the same galaxy though...? An then whether they've attained technologies which, to us, are magical, and so forth... each of these additional requirements for 'contact' reduces the likelihood so enormously as to more than negate such chances.

 

I agree with what MaxyF says though, it's maybe a small chance, but it doesn't rule out the possibility entirely. Maybe I just wont stake my life-savings down the bookies quite yet

[MaxFusion]

Still, it's not by any means a given that 'todays Science fiction is tomorows science fact'. There are some things which I'm pretty sure we'll never achieve. You must read some pretty tame sci-fi

 

true there are things that sound "out there" but c'mon 30 years ago star treck comunicators and plastic money were fiction, today our mobile phones are way better than those star trek used and we pay for thing with a wee plastic card....I recon there are many things that given time mite come true

 

And to keep on topic, time travel thru space is a theoretic posibility

not time travel that we think of now (ie traveling thru time) but to travel to another place with no time involved....sounds kinda stargate-esque but there's ppl working on such things as we speak!

who knows what the future holds....

[Gibber]

You would think so. But the size of the universe means the odds of them visiting us are er....astronomical.

 

i like those odds... if i stick a quid on and they visit do i win the universe?

 

Yep, and your £1 stake back.

[Njugle]

To continue the slant that MaxF was on, given our nearsightedness in any given technological era, it may be fair to drag out another tenuous analogy.

 

Not so long ago the sea was an inhospitable medium which, although humankind were very familiar with it, their interaction was largely on the surface and in the shallows. To quote the most recent example i can think of, the latest class of nuclear submarines that are now under construction have a fuel capacity built-in of 25 years, can travel around the globe completely without surfacing and can 'hear' a ship setting sale from New York from this side of the Atlantic.

 

Now in terms of metaphysics or astronomy, given that we seem to have virtually no comprehension of what the majority of our universe is actually made of, (let alone how to use it), the technology of how to cross it and, perhaps equally importantly, listen across it, is as far beyond our understanding as a nuclear submarine is beyond that of an sixteenth century diving bell occupant.

 

Time and light time are very difficult concepts to deal with, but once again it is not so long since a breath hold was the only means of travelling under water and the speed and travel of sound was an air-oriented concept.

 

Once we understand what we are actually 'living in' we may have a totally different view of light-time.

 

I claim no understanding of the dreaded quantum mechanics (and am embarassed to bring the subject up) but hear tell of particles winking in and out of existence and displaying unity across atomically huge distances. Transfer that model onto an astronomical scale and strange things may indeed happen. The factor that probably undermines this analogy most is the difference in relative timescales of sub-atomic and astronomical processes.

 

Erm, I'm going to stop now, this is all getting a bit too pretentious on my part.

 

I know nuttin' bout it really.