UAP Pentagon Report (UFOs, Foo Fighters, Commie Drones)

[Brian Fantana 6,690]

12 minutes ago, Serak The Preparer said:

Why do you understand that it's just about utterly impossible that we're alone in the universe as intelligent life? What are the assumptions you are making?

Any attempt to quantify the probability of life involves literally guessing at key variables. We are trying to draw from an n of 1. There may be life, there may not be, any attempt to judge probability is just wish casting. And that's fine, it's super fun to think about speculate, but trying to draw probabilistic conclusions is pure fallacy. 

Any attempt to quantify would obviously be almost entirely guesswork. Given the near infinite number of opportunities life would have to arise elsewhere in the universe, it seems extremely unlikely that Earth is the only place that it has occurred. It's estimated that there are what, 10^24 stars in the universe?

At it's most basic, the probability of only one of those stars harboring life is basically nil. However, given the number of variables, the odds would certainly even out quite a bit, and there would be other things to factor in like how many of those hypothetical lifeforms actually evolve to be intelligent, how close are they to us, would we even recognize them as life and vice versa, would we even be able to detect each other given the differences in technology and perception, the list goes on and on and on.

It's nothing more than a fun thing to think about, really.

[Brian Fantana 6,690]

11 minutes ago, Tailgate said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation

 

The threat of losing of your life is a good reason to keep quiet. 

[Serak The Preparer 3,431]

11 minutes ago, Tailgate said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation

 

The threat of losing of your life is a good reason to keep quiet. 

I am very familiar with the Drake Equation. It is a list of assumptions that need to be made, it is not the assumptions. What are the values of those assumptions you are using?

[Brisketexan 105,336]

There are two trillion galaxies in the universe.  TWO.  FUCKING.  TRILLION.  The estimated average number of stars per galaxy is 100 billion.  That means there are TWO HUNDRED BILLION TRILLION STARS.  The odds of there being "life" somewhere among all those is surely 100%.  But that's not the question.

The question is 1) intelligent life 2) that can travel to earth and 3) has traveled to earth but 4) has not made itself widely known (revealed itself, either by benevolent or malevolent action).  And that question is far from answered.  Maybe there is a super-brilliant species in a galaxy a jillion light years away.  Maybe they've even developed faster-than-light travel.  First, they are going to explore their immediate environs.  Then, their galaxy.  And only after that - which may be a many millions of years process....would they venture out to nearby galaxies.  And then after they explore THOSE, they check out the remote galaxies, like ours.  Even if the species is in a nearby galaxy, or even our galaxy, it is still an incredibly long and complex process of exploration.

We'll know when we've been visited by NHI when they make themselves known.  For now, I keep duct tape over my butthole, just in case.

[Serak The Preparer 3,431]

8 minutes ago, Brian Fantana said:

Any attempt to quantify would obviously be almost entirely guesswork. Given the near infinite number of opportunities life would have to arise elsewhere in the universe, it seems extremely unlikely that Earth is the only place that it has occurred. It's estimated that there are what, 10^24 stars in the universe?

At it's most basic, the probability of only one of those stars harboring life is basically nil. However, given the number of variables, the odds would certainly even out quite a bit, and there would be other things to factor in like how many of those hypothetical lifeforms actually evolve to be intelligent, how close are they to us, would we even recognize them as life and vice versa, would we even be able to detect each other given the differences in technology and perception, the list goes on and on and on.

It's nothing more than a fun thing to think about, really.

I 100% agree that it is fun to think about. Let's take the 1^24 stars in the universe, and say each has 10 planets. So we now have 1^25 planets. First assumption, what is the probability of life arising? Is it 10%? 1%? 1E-10%? 1E-50%? We do not have a way to make anything more than a complete guess, and each guess will give drastically different answers to how much life is in the universe. This is why I challenge when you and others say it is so unlikely that Earth has the only life in the universe. I am NOT saying it is unlikely, I'm not say we are alone. I am arguing that even saying likely or unlikely is a fallacy.

 

eddited to add @Brisketexan - as a lawyer, if someone argued in court that because there are 100s of millions of Powerball tickets bought each week that it is impossible to have a week without a winner, would you just let that slide? Or would you argue that we should at least try to estimate the likelihood of getting a winner? You are trying to solve Change of Life = Probability of Life * Number of Planets. We only have one of those values. 

Edited June 5 by Serak The Preparer

[Deej 76,920]

3 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

For now, I keep duct tape over my butthole, just in case.

I do the same whenever I eat Mexican food. 

[Brisketexan 105,336]

10 minutes ago, Serak The Preparer said:

eddited to add @Brisketexan - as a lawyer, if someone argued in court that because there are 100s of millions of Powerball tickets bought each week that it is impossible to have a week without a winner, would you just let that slide? Or would you argue that we should at least try to estimate the likelihood of getting a winner? You are trying to solve Change of Life = Probability of Life * Number of Planets. We only have one of those values. 

Terrible analogy, simply because Powerball odds have a mathematical certainty. There are SO many variables when it comes to 1) life on other planets, 2) it being intelligent, 3) it having the means to travel here, and 4) it ACTUALLY having traveled here....and mind you, those are variables we can't even account for because they are beyond our knowledge and comprehension right now....that the bottom line is that any attempts at "estimating the likelihood" of intelligent life having visited earth is little more than wild guesswork.  Have at it, it's fun to speculate, but at this point in time, it will never be more than wild speculation.  That's all I'm getting at.  We simply don't have the data, or the ability to have certainty as to any number of data points, to make any reliable statement or even estimate of the likelihood of NHI having visited us.

[Serak The Preparer 3,431]

Just now, Brisketexan said:

Terrible analogy, simply because Powerball odds have a mathematical certainty. There are SO many variables when it comes to 1) life on other planets, 2) it being intelligent, 3) it having the means to travel here, and 4) it ACTUALLY having traveled here....and mind you, those are variables we can't even account for because they are beyond our knowledge and comprehension right now....that the bottom line is that any attempts at "estimating the likelihood" of intelligent life having visited earth is little more than wild guesswork.  Have at it, it's fun to speculate, but at this point in time, it will never be more than wild speculation.  That's all I'm getting at.  We simply don't have the data, or the ability to have certainty as to any number of data points, to make any reliable statement or even estimate of the likelihood of NHI having visited us.

I fully admit that I struggled to come with a better analogy in the edit window, mea culpa. I'll let this drop after this but I'm not even trying to get into chance of intelligent life, chance it comes to us, chance that it's not already extinct, etc. Those are all fun to think about, not trying to shoo those discussions away.

I just want people to be honest with the initial assumption, that common statement that you made that there surely has to be life out there. Why? There could be 1E40 planets and still we could not accurately say that life is likely or unlikely because we literally have no idea what the chances of life are, and no way to make even an educated case. Maybe we're multiplying that 1E40 by 10%, maybe be 1E-100%. We don't know.

You can WANT there to be life (or want there NOT to be life), write great stories about the implications, make kick-ass movies, etc. But to actually state there has to be life (or even more likely that not to be life) is pure smoke up the posterior.

[Brisketexan 105,336]

Just now, Serak The Preparer said:

I just want people to be honest with the initial assumption, that common statement that you made that there surely has to be life out there. Why? There could be 1E40 planets and still we could not accurately say that life is likely or unlikely because we literally have no idea what the chances of life are, and no way to make even an educated case. Maybe we're multiplying that 1E40 by 10%, maybe be 1E-100%. We don't know.

You can WANT there to be life (or want there NOT to be life), write great stories about the implications, make kick-ass movies, etc. But to actually state there has to be life (or even more likely that not to be life) is pure smoke up the posterior.

Oh, I see what you're getting at.  And I freely concede that even THAT point ("surely, given that there are two hundred billion trillion stars, life must exist near one of them") is speculation, not certainty.  I'll suggest that the information we have gathered about how life may begin (and may have begun here) helps nudge that analysis.  There's basis for a reasoned hypothesis that basic "life" is not as extraordinary an outcome of physics and chemistry as we might have previous thought.  That is, it's a reasonable hypothesis that algae and slime and such has arisen in multiple places, given those numbers of stars.  But yes, ultimately, we really can't even put a percentage number range on it -- there remain too many unknowns.

[BamaATL 16,593]

I'm on the side that life is likely teaming in the universe, pretty much everywhere.  Complex life, less so, but abundant.  Intelligent, less so as well, but likely frequent.  Space faring intelligent life, even less so, but given the numbers, numerous.  

The problem with the UFO conspiracy thought process is that what you are basically saying is that a species that has reached the pinnacle of physics as we know it; like mastering small things like space, time, and gravity itself; you know the things that would make it possible to travel the cosmos, would come here and suddenly become incompetent.  Apparently, despite their mastery of physics, they don't seem to understand grounding, or an air defense system.  That species has the ability to traverse time and space, but once they get here they suddenly get dumb.  Maybe we infect them with our collective dumb.  

[Brisketexan 105,336]

6 minutes ago, BamaATL said:

Maybe we infect them with our collective dumb.  

To be fair, our dumbness is so vast and dense, that's not a terrible hypothesis.  These beings may be able to successfully navigate around actual black holes, but our black hole of idiocy may be beyond their comprehension, and thus they are vulnerable.

[BamaATL 16,593]

2 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

To be fair, our dumbness is so vast and dense, that's not a terrible hypothesis.  These beings may be able to successfully navigate around actual black holes, but our black hole of idiocy may be beyond their comprehension, and thus they are vulnerable.

That might be our real super power, our collective ability to spread dumb.  We are creative, capable, curious, and able to believe in and subsequently do some of the dumbest shit imaginable.  Perhaps it's catching.  

[Brisketexan 105,336]

Just now, BamaATL said:

That might be our real super power, our collective ability to spread dumb.  We are creative, capable, curious, and able to believe in and subsequently do some of the dumbest shit imaginable.  Perhaps it's catching.  

When all is said and done, the entire universe will be drinking Brawndo, because it's what plants crave.

[Armybrat 40,911]

3 hours ago, Serak The Preparer said:

Can you tell us what research you've done besides watching YouTube videos? Any actual talking to witnesses? Any effort to answer either how or why? It's frankly laughable to see you be so dogmatic about something that can't be known right now (unless you truly believe that we have aliens somewhere and the government is hiding it from us).

I think the large majority of skeptics in this thread (myself certainly included) have never said that aliens have 100%  not visited Earth, just that it is unlikely for a number of reasons. I am not certain that your observation that a bunch of 50+ year olds have less rigid thinking than 20 year olds is quite the flex that you think it is.

 

 

Avatar not consistent with post.

[Armybrat 40,911]

16 minutes ago, BamaATL said:

That might be our real super power, our collective ability to spread dumb.  We are creative, capable, curious, and able to believe in and subsequently do some of the dumbest shit imaginable.  Perhaps it's catching.  

Our social media will eventually destroy the Universe.

[Brisketexan 105,336]

26 minutes ago, Armybrat said:

Our social media will eventually destroy the Universe.

If you're including "Surly" within social media, then....probably.  Or, maybe....just maybe....Surly will SAVE the universe.

Ponder that absurdity for a moment.

[ConferenceRoom 6,147]

3 hours ago, Deej said:

I do the same whenever I eat Mexican food. 

I'm not a scientist but the Axiom of Better Out Than In is pretty much set in stone. 

[Guadaloopy 11,013]

1 hour ago, Armybrat said:

Avatar not consistent with post.

It's perfectly consistent.  Serak would absolutely engage in a campaign of misinformation to sow confusion, doubt, and fear prior to arrival.

 

BTW... this is an exceptionally entertaining thread.  Keep it up, gang!

 

[Homesickhorn 2,208]

General aerial grab-ass is pretty fun though.

If nothing else, it’s a hell of a band name.

I don’t understand the fighting on this thread. Stats, facts, etc all come into play. Personally, I don’t think we’re it. I look up into the stars at 1am while I’m waiting to turn a hog’s head into pink mist with my THOR Scope mounted .308, and feel like it’s just way too vast for it to just be us. Maybe I’m right, maybe I’m wrong. But it’s my opinion. And that’s where it’ll stay. If someone gets shitty with me for my point of view on the subject, then that’s adorable.

Mushrooms have helped, and continually tend to help reassure my opinion.

[59 Burst 434]

6 hours ago, NotActuallyALonghorn said:

I have no doubt that plenty of UFO sightings are advanced stuff we have, but many credible sightings match closely with sightings from long before we even had precursor technology for that stuff. 

 

As far as the Fermi Paradox goes, its core assumption is flawed. 

I worked at Aberdeen. Credible sightings in general are a rocky road. I have witnessed trained individuals offer different accounts of the same event. And these people were aware of what they were about to witness. So no shock value episode one would experience seeing ET causing a psychological event.

Mostly they would corroborate each other. But seldom would these individuals respond to the prepared questions in the same way. Details as simple as what “what color was it” on occasion would be remembered differently. It wasn’t that they were lying or misleading. They just simply saw the event from their own point of view mixed with all the craziness that goes into our memory process. So the “credible witness” oftentimes has difficulty remembering an event, especially its details. When subjected to vigorous questioning by someone who knows the process. 
 

The Fermi paradox is outside of my CV. But, I do find it interesting. 

[956 Worldwide 34,772]

6 hours ago, Serak The Preparer said:

I fully admit that I struggled to come with a better analogy in the edit window, mea culpa. I'll let this drop after this but I'm not even trying to get into chance of intelligent life, chance it comes to us, chance that it's not already extinct, etc. Those are all fun to think about, not trying to shoo those discussions away.

I just want people to be honest with the initial assumption, that common statement that you made that there surely has to be life out there. Why? There could be 1E40 planets and still we could not accurately say that life is likely or unlikely because we literally have no idea what the chances of life are, and no way to make even an educated case. Maybe we're multiplying that 1E40 by 10%, maybe be 1E-100%. We don't know.

You can WANT there to be life (or want there NOT to be life), write great stories about the implications, make kick-ass movies, etc. But to actually state there has to be life (or even more likely that not to be life) is pure smoke up the posterior.

More fun with big numbers: About 4 billion species of cellular life have existed on Earth. One has become space-faring and invented a radio telescope. 

There are other forms of life on this planet that are very close to being intelligent.  Dolphins have had millions of years to evolve into a technological species but haven’t. 
 

There’s a buried assumption that evolution inevitably trends towards intelligence and complexity but it doesn’t. Make a few tweaks to the geological history of earth and maybe it never happens here. We never got a technological dinosaur after all. 

[Brisketexan 105,336]

4 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

Dolphins have had millions of years to evolve into a technological species but haven’t. 

To be fair, they got to the point of "swim around and frolic and be super promiscuous" and said "we're good.  We can stop evolving now."

Point awarded to dolphins.

[Guadaloopy 11,013]

2 hours ago, 59 Burst said:

The Fermi paradox is outside of my CV. But, I do find it interesting.

It's fiction, but I thought that The Dark Forest (second book of Cixin Liu's Three Body Problem series) did an elegant (and terrifying) job of explaining the Fermi paradox with the maxims of cosmic sociology.

1. Survival is the primary need of civilization
2. Civilization continuously grows and expands, but the total matter in the universe remains constant.

Combining these two maxims with game theory leads to the conclusion that the surest path for survival in the universe is to remain completely undetected.  Once you have achieved sufficient technology to make yourself known in the universe, other civilizations will logically view you as a technologically competent competitor for the finite resources (matter) in the universe. 

In this scenario, there are two paths for survival.  The first is to remain completely undetected and carefully develop technology in a manner such that you remain undetected.  The second is that you immediately obliterate any civilization that you detect lest they detect and destroy you first.

[Goredho 17,419]

7 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

There are two trillion galaxies in the universe.  TWO.  FUCKING.  TRILLION.  The estimated average number of stars per galaxy is 100 billion.  That means there are TWO HUNDRED BILLION TRILLION STARS.  The odds of there being "life" somewhere among all those is surely 100%.  But that's not the question.

The question is 1) intelligent life 2) that can travel to earth and 3) has traveled to earth but 4) has not made itself widely known (revealed itself, either by benevolent or malevolent action).  And that question is far from answered.  Maybe there is a super-brilliant species in a galaxy a jillion light years away.  Maybe they've even developed faster-than-light travel.  First, they are going to explore their immediate environs.  Then, their galaxy.  And only after that - which may be a many millions of years process....would they venture out to nearby galaxies.  And then after they explore THOSE, they check out the remote galaxies, like ours.  Even if the species is in a nearby galaxy, or even our galaxy, it is still an incredibly long and complex process of exploration.

We'll know when we've been visited by NHI when they make themselves known.  For now, I keep duct tape over my butthole, just in case.

If there is one thing our present state of humanity should have taught us is that A) a planet and the life on it is fragile and B) intelligence is very often commingled with hubris.  It is far, far, far more likely that intelligent life destroys itself before it ever advances enough to make the universe small.

[956 Worldwide 34,772]

1 minute ago, Guadaloopy said:

It's fiction, but I thought that The Dark Forest (second book of Cixin Liu's Three Body Problem series) did an elegant (and terrifying) job of explaining the Fermi paradox with the maxims of cosmic sociology.

1. Survival is the primary need of civilization
2. Civilization continuously grows and expands, but the total matter in the universe remains constant.

Combining these two maxims with game theory leads to the conclusion that the surest path for survival in the universe is to remain completely undetected.  Once you have achieved sufficient technology to make yourself known in the universe, other civilizations will logically view you as a technologically competent competitor for the finite resources (matter) in the universe. 

In this scenario, there are two paths for survival.  The first is to remain completely undetected and carefully develop technology in a manner such that you remain undetected.  The second is that you immediately obliterate any civilization that you detect lest they detect and destroy you first.

Humanity chose to send dick pics and an address. “Aliens, u up?”

[Brisketexan 105,336]

1 minute ago, 956 Worldwide said:

Humanity chose to send dick pics and an address. “Aliens, u up?”

And the smart aliens respond with "new phone, who dis?"

[Brian Fantana 6,690]

22 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

More fun with big numbers: About 4 billion species of cellular life have existed on Earth. One has become space-faring and invented a radio telescope. 

There are other forms of life on this planet that are very close to being intelligent.  Dolphins have had millions of years to evolve into a technological species but haven’t. 
 

There’s a buried assumption that evolution inevitably trends towards intelligence and complexity but it doesn’t. Make a few tweaks to the geological history of earth and maybe it never happens here. We never got a technological dinosaur after all. 

Yeah, this is a big part of why it's all impossible to quantify. At least on Earth, species evolve to a level of intelligence that their circumstances demand. Dolphins, orcas, etc. don't need to be any smarter than they are. They certainly have advanced communication within their species with complex language/dialects, complex social structures, empathy, etc, but their morphology disallows tool usage, so there's no reason for them to evolve to be able to develop technology to augment that.

As our ancestors started using tools, our brains started growing so we could develop more complex tools to solve increasingly complex problems, our children were consequently born with larger brains, which resulted in them being more and more helpless, which required increasingly complex social order.....and this evolutionary feedback loop resulted in a space-faring civilization.

It's such an interesting "accident" of evolution to think about. There are numerous species on Earth now that aren't humans that have learned to use tools;, but the most advanced would probably be chimps, and they're barely beginning to use tools from an evolutionary standpoint. There's certainly potential for them and other species to eventually develop along a similar path as humans, but such processes occur on time scales that are impossible for humans to wrap our minds around.

Edited June 5 by Brian Fantana
wording

[MonkeyDoughnut 10,356]

8 hours ago, Pam Cummings said:

It amazes me that this subject actually gets people so worked up that they'll start insulting each other. I'm gonna go ahead and say that until I see aliens with my own eyes, they aren't among us. Other life out there in the universe, sure, that's a magnitude of space that I just can't fathom. But I am fairly certain that a species capable of traveling across the universe would not simply watch us... they would immediately eliminate us and take our resources....

The invisible aliens say hi.

[Brisketexan 105,336]

9 minutes ago, Brian Fantana said:

but the most advanced would probably be chimps, and they're barely beginning to use tools from an evolutionary standpoint. There's certainly potential for them and other species to eventually develop along a similar path as humans, but such processes occur on time scales that are impossible for humans to wrap our minds around.

Oh...I think we can wrap our minds around it....

[Dbeasy 15,092]

On 6/7/2023 at 11:04 PM, CooterBrown said:

 

I did some consulting at Wright Patterson AFB 15 years ago. While driving around with our liaison, he pointed to a building and said “that’s where they kept an alien craft years ago. It still has weird smell so it’s no longer used.” He was pretty nonchalant about sharing that info so I didn’t think much about it at the time since he’d earlier pointed out an old clinic that was haunted. Interestingly enough, that base is mentioned as having done UFO research in that article.

 

Had lunch with my brother recently. Our dad was an officer stationed at Wright Pat during the early to late 60’s before shipping off the Vietnam. My brother mentioned that our dad also pointed out the building to him where the UFO evidence was stored. It reminded me of this post. It was a poorly kept secret there.     

 

[Serak The Preparer 3,431]

51 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

 Dolphins have had millions of years to evolve into a technological species but haven’t. 

You missed on some of @ztejas's research:

[Snake Diggity 4,627]

1 hour ago, 956 Worldwide said:

Humanity chose to send dick pics and an address. “Aliens, u up?”

X, 1

[59 Burst 434]

1 hour ago, Guadaloopy said:

It's fiction, but I thought that The Dark Forest (second book of Cixin Liu's Three Body Problem series) did an elegant (and terrifying) job of explaining the Fermi paradox with the maxims of cosmic sociology.

1. Survival is the primary need of civilization
2. Civilization continuously grows and expands, but the total matter in the universe remains constant.

Combining these two maxims with game theory leads to the conclusion that the surest path for survival in the universe is to remain completely undetected.  Once you have achieved sufficient technology to make yourself known in the universe, other civilizations will logically view you as a technologically competent competitor for the finite resources (matter) in the universe. 

In this scenario, there are two paths for survival.  The first is to remain completely undetected and carefully develop technology in a manner such that you remain undetected.  The second is that you immediately obliterate any civilization that you detect lest they detect and destroy you first.

I read somewhere that he was at some brainiac symposium and made the remark tongue in cheek, and it took off from there. I have no idea if that is true. 

[Schulz2.0 29,011]

What are aliens interested in?

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4,977]

2 hours ago, Brian Fantana said:

Yeah, this is a big part of why it's all impossible to quantify. At least on Earth, species evolve to a level of intelligence that their circumstances demand. Dolphins, orcas, etc. don't need to be any smarter than they are. They certainly have advanced communication within their species with complex language/dialects, complex social structures, empathy, etc, but their morphology disallows tool usage, so there's no reason for them to evolve to be able to develop technology to augment that.

As our ancestors started using tools, our brains started growing so we could develop more complex tools to solve increasingly complex problems, our children were consequently born with larger brains, which resulted in them being more and more helpless, which required increasingly complex social order.....and this evolutionary feedback loop resulted in a space-faring civilization.

It's such an interesting "accident" of evolution to think about. There are numerous species on Earth now that aren't humans that have learned to use tools;, but the most advanced would probably be chimps, and they're barely beginning to use tools from an evolutionary standpoint. There's certainly potential for them and other species to eventually develop along a similar path as humans, but such processes occur on time scales that are impossible for humans to wrap our minds around.

Strap a dildo to a dolphin and they will evolve to use tools pretty quickly. 

[956 Worldwide 34,772]

Wright Patterson is home to this day of the National Air and Space Intelligence Center, which was created out of the Air Force’s foreign technology study program. In the 1940s through 50s they studied German and then Soviet aircraft.  That’s what was behind the doors of the “UFO” building. 
 

Even Goldwater had theories about it. No spacecraft needed, just recovered and defected Ilyushin and Yaks. 

[956 Worldwide 34,772]

5 hours ago, 59 Burst said:

I worked at Aberdeen. Credible sightings in general are a rocky road. I have witnessed trained individuals offer different accounts of the same event. And these people were aware of what they were about to witness. So no shock value episode one would experience seeing ET causing a psychological event.

Mostly they would corroborate each other. But seldom would these individuals respond to the prepared questions in the same way. Details as simple as what “what color was it” on occasion would be remembered differently. It wasn’t that they were lying or misleading. They just simply saw the event from their own point of view mixed with all the craziness that goes into our memory process. So the “credible witness” oftentimes has difficulty remembering an event, especially its details. When subjected to vigorous questioning by someone who knows the process. 
 

The Fermi paradox is outside of my CV. But, I do find it interesting. 

It’s a near iron law that as we get smarter and better equipped, unexplained and mysterious phenomena become ever more mundane and explainable.  The UAP phenomena is almost certainly a flaw on our sensing and perception side.

In this debate I am reminded of the canals on Mars, for which there was vastly more consensus and agreement that they existed than we have for alien craft, and vigorous debate among mainstream experts over what they were for decades. We got better telescopes and the reality was just that eyes and equipment were playing tricks on us.  This is usually the direction things go. 

[smuggs 9,353]

13 hours ago, NotActuallyALonghorn said:

Strap a dildo to a dolphin and they will evolve to use tools pretty quickly. 

But evolution has already gifted them a dildo face.

 

[BurntEyes 6,030]

I'm going to apologize if the following point has been made in advance. 

I love discussion of the cosmos and Cosmo and Kosmo Kramer. 

I'm of the position that there is very likely life. I doubt there is intelligent life, but if there is, odd are, iirc, it's not carbon based. I'll love to have this point disputed with more recent data/math/theory if someone is aware of such.

I do recall this very interesting story. 

https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/deep-space/a60141520/alien-is-a-truck/

[59 Burst 434]

It is a fun discussion. As a species we have accomplished some awesome shit. But, we are fragile, and lack the technology to venture into the cosmos. 

I also think we live on a very, very rare planet. The combination of magnetic protection, abundance of water, Goldilock zone, a moon that influences tides all are required for our survival. Not to mention dinosaurs. We are a fluke that probably doesn’t even exist if not for a ELE that took those guys out.
 

Since they evolved first perhaps there are planets full of dinosaurs that just go about their lives. Never aware of anything else.

[Biff Tannen 45,741]

Fingernails are pretty. Fingernails are good. 

[Goredho 17,419]

Probably just a p-funk concert.

 

Red Rocks Employees Report UFO Sighting at the Venue

"There was no mistaking what this was: We all saw a giant disc-shaped craft hovering a few hundred feet above the ground with three rows of windows and lights."

https://www.westword.com/music/red-rocks-employees-report-ufo-sighting-21205147

[Parliament 14,296]

We got one of those bastards!  USA!

 

[Bevo Num1 1,023]

I understand what's being conveyed, but that tweet was difficult to read. 

[bolverk 29,717]

3 minutes ago, Bevo Num1 said:

I understand what's being conveyed, but that tweet was difficult to read. 

It's a Polish account, so English isn't their first language.

[bernorange 8,363]

 

[BabaYaga 15,320]

Oh, look it's a UFO.  See how it stays stationary, moves at incredible speeds, changes direction instantly, even goes up walls and holds to the ceiling.

[ztejas 43,537]

On 6/9/2024 at 4:56 AM, 59 Burst said:

The combination of magnetic protection, abundance of water, Goldilock zone, a moon that influences tides all are required for our survival.

I think the moon is the only thing "rare" about our planet. 

[SpiralOut 1,818]

10 hours ago, ztejas said:

I think the moon is the only thing "rare" about our planet. 

IIRC, our solar system has a fairly unique setup which has helped life evolve here on Earth.  We've got a giant, failed star not too far down the road with Jupiter.  It sucks up tons of space debris that would have blasted us.  

If you truly have a decent grasp on the scale of the Universe, aliens visiting us is hilarious.  Somewhere between 100-400 BILLION stars in our Galaxy alone.  Almost all of which have planets.  That's a lot of territory to have to go check out assuming you've figured out how to break the laws of physics and can teleport around the neighborhood.  

One thing I learned just the other day was that the Sun doesn't have a steady path on its trip around the Milky Way.  You'd think it would just be a nice circular jaunt, orbiting the super massive black hole at the center.  Nope.  Due to gravitational forces of the stars around us, it essentially bobs up and down.  It will go thousands of light years above and below the galactic plane.  We are cooking along in what is called the Local Bubble.  Interestingly, a super nova blew up millions of years ago and cleared this section of space out.  The density of stars in this section of space we're traveling through currently is less than 1/10th of what it is for the rest of the Milky Way.  We entered this bubble sometime 5-10 MILLION years ago and we'll still be traveling through it for millions more years to come. 

So basically, we're at the ass end of nowhere with hardly anything worth looking at.  We've been the ass end of nowhere and we're going to continue to be the ass end of nowhere.  Yet, out of all the places aliens could check out they decided to come here to probe some buttholes.  We certainly didn't call them since radio waves from Earth have only managed to travel 100 light years in the century we've been broadcasting.  If you think aliens have visited Earth then you're tacitly saying you believe aliens seeded life on Earth and that they're coming back to check up on us.  That's the only idea that makes any real sense.  Unless we're saying these aliens have transcended normal reality or some shit, but if they had why bother with us and why fly around in weird ships, not announce themselves, and probe buttholes?  

 

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2 hours ago, SpiralOut said:

IIRC, our solar system has a fairly unique setup which has helped life evolve here on Earth.  We've got a giant, failed star not too far down the road with Jupiter.  It sucks up tons of space debris that would have blasted us.  

If you truly have a decent grasp on the scale of the Universe, aliens visiting us is hilarious.  Somewhere between 100-400 BILLION stars in our Galaxy alone.  Almost all of which have planets.  That's a lot of territory to have to go check out assuming you've figured out how to break the laws of physics and can teleport around the neighborhood.  

One thing I learned just the other day was that the Sun doesn't have a steady path on its trip around the Milky Way.  You'd think it would just be a nice circular jaunt, orbiting the super massive black hole at the center.  Nope.  Due to gravitational forces of the stars around us, it essentially bobs up and down.  It will go thousands of light years above and below the galactic plane.  We are cooking along in what is called the Local Bubble.  Interestingly, a super nova blew up millions of years ago and cleared this section of space out.  The density of stars in this section of space we're traveling through currently is less than 1/10th of what it is for the rest of the Milky Way.  We entered this bubble sometime 5-10 MILLION years ago and we'll still be traveling through it for millions more years to come. 

So basically, we're at the ass end of nowhere with hardly anything worth looking at.  We've been the ass end of nowhere and we're going to continue to be the ass end of nowhere.  Yet, out of all the places aliens could check out they decided to come here to probe some buttholes.  We certainly didn't call them since radio waves from Earth have only managed to travel 100 light years in the century we've been broadcasting.  If you think aliens have visited Earth then you're tacitly saying you believe aliens seeded life on Earth and that they're coming back to check up on us.  That's the only idea that makes any real sense.  Unless we're saying these aliens have transcended normal reality or some shit, but if they had why bother with us and why fly around in weird ships, not announce themselves, and probe buttholes?  

 

As you get deeper into the UFO internet, there’s a subset of people who say that UFOs are actually inter-dimensional demons. Tucker Carlson has said something like this. 
 

And honestly, that’s not really less plausible than what you need to accept in terms of unlikely physics and probability for them to be visitors from outside our solar system.