'No evidence' for extraterrestrials, says White House,....

[Reiku]

@Mister --



Now you've crossed the line from being a defensive if innocent enthusiast into character assassination. Not only have I looked at every single thing you've asked me to here(Guy Hottel memorandum doesn't even concern Roswell), but I've pointed out where your very links contradict your arguments. This isn't "ignoring the evidence", it's investigating what you dispense as "evidence" and flinging it right back in your face because while it might look like evidence from a distance, up close you can tell that it's a pile of dingo's kidneys.

(1)

What criteria are you basing this evaluation on, wishful thinking?

(2)

Maybe, that would depend on just what it takes for abiogenesis to occur. The most we can say right now is that we know that it happened once, therefore it is possible, and that given the size of the universe it's likely that there's some kind of life out there somewhere.


(3)

This is in doubt. According to Hawking and many other great physicists out there it should have taken roughly eight billion years or so for the universe to reach a state conducive to life, with the heavy elements being "baked" in the stars and then waiting for enough of those stars to explode and release those elements in sufficient number that they clump together. That means that any other civilizations that may be out there would have, at most, a billion year head start, likely much less than that if we're not the ones with a head start.

(4)

We also know that while abiogenesis is possible and that the size of the universe makes it likely that it has occurred elsewhere, it is still an exceedingly rare event.

(5)

Yeah, I have a phone call for you. It's a Mr. Kettle, he wants to talk to you about the color black, do you want to take this in the other room?

(6)

Then why don't we bring in some of the other physicists to comment on this, because I'm certainly not going to take your word for it. Not with your well documented habit of dishonesty.


(7)

I never attempted to dismiss your arguments because you're a UFO nut, I only ever dismissed them because of a lack of evidence and or faulty reasoning and I always explained why I was dismissing them. You've not done any of those things once in this entire thread, you've always just accused people of ignoring the evidence while ignoring the fact that you haven't presented any evidence!!!

(8)

You've been posting in this thread for eight vagina swilling pages and have yet to produce one piece of evidence despite multiple demands for you to support your arguments with evidence, all the while lambasting anyone who disagrees with you as "trolls" or even accusing them of ignoring evidence when they've been talking about your "evidence" all along. How, exactly, do you intend to square your actions here with the innocent victim persona you're obviously trying to project?



Coming from you that's a laugh.

(9)

(1) - I haven't needed to assassinate your character. I remember when I said to you when I first began debating this with you, I said there was a lot of evidence. You said you wanted to see this evidence. I spent about an hour writing up valuable evidence for you, in which you turned round and said ''I want links.''

I then said to you, it does no good for me to do all the work. You need to put work into this as well. But you argued that it wasn't your place to do this work, in fact your words were ''so you want me to do all the work for you''... which is again, disingenuous considering I spent a large amount of time preparing that work for you. I wasn't asking you to really do any work at all. Only that if you found anything dubious, it would take you a few seconds to analyse that work against a quick google search. I eventually flat out said I wouldn't do that for you. That you would need to do some work for yourself. I never heard any more responses from my post of factual evidence.

So I have not needed to assassinate any character at all.

(2) - Wishful thinking? How large do you think the universe would have needed to be for a civilization to appear? Don't answer that, I know your area isn't physics at all.

The age of the universe is 15 billion years old. The universe cooled down and created stable orbiting planets at just over 200 million years old. That leaves still a large amount of time for any civilization to begin evolving. You simply are not aware of how frequent life really will be in this universe. We are told by top physicists and astrophysicists today that the statistics for life are increadibly high, in any direction you decide to look into the universe and there is more than ample time for any of them to evolve efficiently into intelligent beings, no doubt, probably more intelligent than ourselves.

(3) - It is not just a ''maybe''. It is in fact Statistically very high.

(4) - Maybe for Carbon-based lifeforms where carbon was made in abundance inside of stars in a special nucleic process called a triple-alpha process, which was discovered by Fred Hoyle. In fact, not only do we assume all life should be carbon based forms which could be faulty, but the age of the universe is questionable as well. But even if no one questioned the age of the universe, there should still be some room in there for a carbon based civilization to have a jump start ahead of us. This isn't so much improbable. We must assume that as soon as life has a chance, it will indeed thrive. This is not based on guesswork, there is a lot of evidence for this on our home planet as an example!!!!

(5) - Neh, again not rare at all. Our planet is filled with micro-organisms everywhere. This entire planet is one huge living sphere of diverse biological entities. There will be many chances for life to appear elsewhere. Taking into mind the mind-boggling size of the universe, and how much matter is really in it, I don't see anyone claiming it would be rare as a fair arguement at all when presenting the facts.

(6) - Except I don't ignore evidence. When I say someone is wrong against the facts, I say so with good reason. I don't run about with my arms waving, insulting their intelligence or calling them cranks. Not normally anyway. Takes a good crank before I call them such.

(7) - Habit of dishonesty, elaborate please? And with that mentioned, I know many solutions to the Einstein equations. There are many cases, such as wormholes for instance. But did this bypass your mind? Or are you just not really equipped in physics language enough to have recognized this as a valid possible solution?

(8) - So now we recognize there was evidence put forward... this is actually a big leap. You had continued saying to me, even in private messages that you had seen no evidence at all. I'm glad we have finally recognized that there has been evidence. As I said, the definitions you've been mixing up is ''evidence'' and ''proof''... skeptics do this all the time. I'll let you off.

(9) - OOoops... no take that back. you still don't understand the definition of ''evidence''. What I have stated are not ''arguements''... or atleast, not when I wrote all that work up for you. That was factual Historical Evidence, which you just ignored anyway. I have been debating this so long, because this is what you find when you throw skeptics and believers into a room. Idea's always clash and there is usually little movement forwards, just as is my case with you.

 

[Arioch]

@Mister --

I'll give this one last go before I just clam up demanding to see your evidence.

You need to put work into this as well.

As I said, you obviously know nothing about the way science works. You made a claim, therefore all of the onus to support that claim is on you, not the person who disagrees with you. This is called the burden of proof, your claim, your job to do the work.

And you act as if analyzing the work for errors as well as double checking sources isn't work. It is, quite a lot of it. This very attitude tells me that while you claim to at least be knowledgeable about science(though I've yet to see any evidence of that either), you aren't actually a scientist, which is a good thing in my opinion.

So I'm doing my share of the work, you're just shirking on your end.

I spent a large amount of time preparing that work for you.

Yup, I can write too, probably a good deal better than you can(it's sort of my job). I can type up whatever I want and given Poe's Law it's a good bet that a google search would turn up quite a few sites that support it, probably some that even look official(although, perhaps you don't know the difference). Yeah, that's so not going to be a complete waste of my time. Somebody here obviously doesn't know much about the internet, and it isn't me.

So I have not needed to assassinate any character at all.

....Hence all of the ad hominem attacks. Right, it all makes so much sense now.

The age of the universe is 15 billion years old.

Wrong again.

Gosh, getting such an easy one wrong must be harsh for a magnificent mind such as yours.

The universe cooled down and created stable orbiting planets at just over 200 million years old. That leaves still a large amount of time for any civilization to begin evolving.

Really? That's not what I read, and I think I'll trust Hawking over some internet troll who has no qualifications.

You simply are not aware of how frequent life really will be in this universe.

No, you're simply not aware of what the scientists are actually saying. You're engaged in confirmation bias, hearing what you want to hear instead of what is actually said.

We are told by top physicists and astrophysicists today that the statistics for life are increadibly high

No, they tell us that the components necessary for our kind of life are incredibly common, but there's a hell of a lot more to it than that, you just don't understand abiogenesis. I think I'll wait for the chemists to work out a good model for abiogenesis before I go around attaching numbers to the thing, they are the experts in that field after all.

in any direction you decide to look into the universe and there is more than ample time for any of them to evolve efficiently into intelligent beings, no doubt, probably more intelligent than ourselves.

And here is where, as a biology enthusiast, I can tell you that you've gone off the deep end into wild speculation. Judging from the sample size we have, which is trillions of life forms that have been evolving for roughly four billion years, you seem to have absolutely no idea how rare intelligence is in nature. Nature is surely capable of producing intelligence, but it only seems to be a useful trait in a tiny percentage of species, namely those like us. We're talking about warmblooded mammals who need to move around and be able to respond to change. Of all of the other forms of life we've seen, the majority of them so incredibly alien that they dwarf what you lot can produce in strangeness, don't seem to need intelligence at all. The most successful branch of the evolutionary tree, namely the bacteria, don't even have proper nervous systems. What makes you think that intelligence will be a quality that natural selection chooses in a completely different environment? You have absolutely no basis for such a hypothesis, in fact to even consider it at this point in time is laughable. We just know too little to take such ideas seriously.

It is not just a ''maybe''. It is in fact Statistically very high.

That there is some form of life out there? Yeah, I can buy that I guess. That it's intelligent and capable of visiting us? You need to be looking at the other end of the probability spectrum to find those odds.

Neh, again not rare at all. Our planet is filled with micro-organisms everywhere. This entire planet is one huge living sphere of diverse biological entities.

Again, you're straying from your vaunted physics territory, you don't seem to know what is physics and what belongs to other fields of science. None of this speaks to the likelihood of abiogenesis at all. It doesn't matter how many species or phyla are on this planet, there was still only one abiogenesis event that we have to work with. One, and it took about half a billion years and the conditions were obviously favorable for it. This is all of the data we have when it comes to how rare or common abiogenesis really is. And, again, none of this even remotely implies that evolution would then produce intelligent species out there, even here it's not exactly a favored trait.

There will be many chances for life to appear elsewhere.

Again, given that you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about here, perhaps you should stop postulating about it. You have literally no idea of just how rare an event it actually is. Beyond that you have no idea what conditions, other than early Earth conditions, might be favorable to abiogenesis and we know that there are infinitely more conditions that are going to be hostile to any slow process. Let's say that the odds are astronomically low, say one if five hundred trillion, just how likely would you say ETs are then?

Well, you'd probably say it's still very high because you have absolutely no clue about the processes involved.

I don't run about with my arms waving, insulting their intelligence or calling them cranks.

No, when people disagree with you you just accuse them of ignoring the evidence regardless of what they actually posted. You then resort to name calling in an attempt to reduce their arguments in your eyes by reducing their character in your eyes. If that isn't insulting my, and everyone else who reads this thread, intelligence then nothing is.

Habit of dishonesty, elaborate please?

Well let's see. There's the "claiming to have evidence and then refusing to present it while claiming that you already have" bit that's been going on for over nine pages now. That's pretty well documented and dishonest. Oh, and let's not forget the ad hominems made against virtually everyone who disagrees with you, not exactly honest behavior there.

There are many cases, such as wormholes for instance. But did this bypass your mind?

The problem with wormholes is that you would need a negative mass inside of it to stabilize it long enough to pass through, and even then you'd have no way of knowing where or when you'd end up. A million passages could take you to a million different places or times, not exactly what's needed for intergalactic travel. And all of that assumes that it would be mechanically possible to create and stabilize a wormhole(tearing the fabric of the universe has got to take a lot of energy, no matter which way you come at it from), and I didn't think that we were in the habit of wildly postulating magical technology for our aliens.

Yeah, even though physics isn't my forte, I'm not exactly ignorant about it either.

Or are you just not really equipped in physics language enough to have recognized this as a valid possible solution?

Again, unless you're going to posit miraculous super technology for our aliens then it's not a valid solution.

So now we recognize there was evidence put forward...

Now where did I say that? Oh yeah, I didn't. You obviously don't write much, or read much for that matter, or didn't you notice the quotation marks around the word "evidence" when I was talking about what you dribbled into your keyboard?

As I said, the definitions you've been mixing up is ''evidence'' and ''proof''... skeptics do this all the time. I'll let you off.

Perhaps you need a few things explained to you. Your entire argument and all of the "evidence" you've offered up so far rests on undemonstrated assumptions. In other words, until your premise is demonstrated to be true, nothing you've proffered counts as evidence as it all hinges on that assumption, well, those assumptions. The assumptions that need to be made in order to accept your "evidence" as empirical are as follows:

1. Interstellar and intergalactic travel is possible. Right now this is an unknown, it might be but it might not be.

2. Abiogenesis has occurred elsewhere. This is, again, completely unknown though I would consider it likely so I'd even grant you this one.

3. That abiogenesis event resulted in an alien species more intelligent than we are. And yes, the more is necessary given the necessary time for evolution to produce complex brains(brains here is shorthand for "thinking organ", whatever "they" use as a brain is fine). Again, this is completely unknown and highly unlikely given that intelligence is not a popular trait in high doses.

4. These aliens have not only discovered the key to intergalactic or interstellar(as a best case scenario) travel but have located and decided for apparently completely spurious reasons to come all the way here to spook some locals(apparently they are able to bend space like a Guild Navigator but can't quite figure out optical camouflage). I don't think that I really need to state how obviously pitiable those numbers are, just given the sheer size of the universe and how minuscule our radiowave bubble really is in comparison.

Now, even though I granted you number two your argument still fails on a basic level because numbers one, three, and four are all completely undemonstrated, and yet you try to use evidence which requires those assumptions to demonstrate those assumptions. Circular reasoning much?

That was factual Historical Evidence, which you just ignored anyway.

Wrong. There may have been historical facts sprinkled in there, but it was almost completely speculation on your part, speculation which, again, requires the above mentioned assumptions to be made before it makes any sort of sense.

And I ignored it because, as I've been telling you over and over again, anyone can type anything on the internet. Even if I had accepted your laundry list of personal interpretations, I would have still asked you for your sources because I'm not going to accept anything that isn't sourced, especially not when it's on such an important topic. Since what I was asking for in the first place was your evidence(in other words, your sources), I fail to see how accepting that load of tripe would have changed anything because I would have still asked for your sources. Preferably in link form.

I have been debating this so long, because this is what you find when you throw skeptics and believers into a room. Idea's always clash and there is usually little movement forwards, just as is my case with you.

Well it would help your case if you could give me something other than flares and a Nirvana Fallacy.

 

[Reiku]

This is a load of BS

''Wrong. There may have been historical facts sprinkled in there, but it was almost completely speculation on your part, speculation which, again, requires the above mentioned assumptions to be made before it makes any sort of sense.''

I will go back and get that work for you, and maybe you could show us exactly where there is only a few historical facts mashed in with mostly speculation on my behalf. I will do this next. I would appreciate you stand your corner and demonstrate this; and if you can't, then you truely are a hypocrite when it comes to saying other people misrepresent the facts.

I will also answer your post above tomorrow. I simply am far too tired for this all tonight.

 

[Reiku]

So Arioch, stand your ground and put your money were your mouth is. Explain to me and the audience how this following part is mostly speculation on my behalf?

''The ''official statement'' from the FBI for instance, in October 1973, by FBI director Clarence M. Kelly explained to an enquirer that ''the investigation into unidenified flying objects is not and has never been within the jurisdiction of the FBI.''

It was only years later, in 1976 the FBI released some 1,100 documents and memorandums on UFO-related incidents, some being classified as ''beyond top secret''.

Now why did the FBI hide it to begin with? You only hide something when there is something to hide. If people within the circles of the FBI where so aware of how much the UFO culture was ''a load of hoolah,'' then why all the need for secrecy... they obviously knew more than what they were telling.

On a similar investigation into cover-up tactics and denial, comes from a statement made by NASA in an information sheet, serial number 78-1, prepared by the LFF-3/Public services branch, office of external relations, NASA headquarters in washington, that ''NASA is not engaged in any type of research program involving UFO activity.''

However, contradictory to this rather straightforward statement, two pages from a NASA instruction kit: issued originally by Kurt Debus , Director of John F. Kennedy Space Center in June 1967, explains that UFO's are to be reported immediately to control, and that the outcome of the investigation wiLL not be discussed with the caller.

Again, why did they cover up that they investigated UFO's? This is not the only case. Well, one NASA test pilot called Joseph Walker who test flew the rocket-powered X-15 planes revealed it was one of his duties to look for UFO's and even take pictures of them. So if the phenomenon is one which is not real, which NASA would have you believe, why have someone under you represent the dedication of looking into such objects?

There is an obvious symmetry between the two cases. Of course, with that said, the FBI's case is much more startling. 1,100-odd documented cases of UFO activity is a far cry from being ''outside their jurisdiction.''

Of course, the most famous case of denial was the Roswell Incident; Originally Military Personnel reported that they had in their possession a saucer-shaped craft. This statement was later denied by higher ranking officials. I think competent Military Personnel would know the difference between a weather balloon and a saucer shaped craft, no?

Well, we have evidence that something almost certainly happened at Roswell according to a previously top-secret memorandum. It was an office memorandum, dated march 22 1950, from Special Agent Guy Hottel to J. Edgar Hoover the FBI Director, which seemed to admit the existence of disks which where retrieved in new mexico during that momentous day. However, this memorandum was released recently (again) causing a great hype in the UFO community, though no true skeptic aware of the facts denies that the memorandum was real. Such detail that is put into the memorandum, as short as it is, it is quite a startling peice and arguably the ''smoking gun'' according to Nick Pope, who was an investigator for the Ministry of Defense into the UFO phenomenon.

There are also STS-videos (filmed by NASA into the deep of space) and even looking into the Earth's atmosphere (where the integrity of the video cannot be refuted) and real objects are in view which takes in all conventional pictures of UFO's (saucer-shaped and metallic)?

NASA washes every case (more than several cases of UFO's that have been filmed) as identifiable objects. But many professionals outside of NASA have came forward and expressed views that their explanation don't wash half the time. Of course, taking into consideration that they have already lied about their involvement in UFO activity, who'd really believe their explanations anyway?

Scott Carpenter, a former US Navy test pilot, intelligence officer and astronaut claims he had seen UFO's on the Mercury 7 flight on may 24th 1962. It is said that Carpenter later denied this, but in a transcript of Lovell's Flight on Gemini 7, an object was in fact encountered.

Maurice Chatelain, a former NASA communications specialist who says that all Apollo and Gemini flights had been closely monitered by UFO's, but the mission was sworn to absolute secrecy.

Wilbert Smith a senior radio engineer who worked in secret defense projects, and who corrolated with Dr. Vannevar Bush who was the presidential scientific advisor in 1947, was elected head of a top-secret investigative panel of scientists, a project by the name of ''project magnet'' - his team was to investigate the possibility of advancing propulsion systems based on magnetic principles. Smith is reported as saying:

''Whether the phenomenae be due to Natural Magnetic Causes, or Alien Vehicles, there would probably be associated with some sighting some magnetic or radio noise disturbance. Also there is a possibility of gamma radiation being associated.''

Not to mention, UFO's have been caught on radar, so refuting their physical corporeal existences can be easily disproven. In an interim on project magnet, Smith Concluded:

''If it appears evident, the flying saucers are emissaries from some other civilization, and actually do operate on magnetic principles, we have us before the fact that we have missed something in magnetic theory.''

Smith was a very prominent investigator into the UFO phenomenon, and in 1960 reported that he and his scientists had came into posession of what was alleged a peice of a flying saucer:

''We have done a tremendous amount of detective work on this metal... we have something which was not brought here by plane, nor by boat, nor by helocopter... we are speculating that we are in posession of a portion of a much larger device which came into this solar system - we don't know when, but it has been in space for a long time. We can tell this by the micrometeorites embedded in the surface.''

The documents however which can prove Wilbert Smiths claims, are unfortunately still calssified under the department of transport, most likely.

Let us not forget the 1952 UFO mass-sighting over Washington. Here a link is provided of this rather extraordinary event which has similar overtones to the Pheonix Incident which is also linked

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1952_Wa...._UFO_incident

(go to youtube for original footage)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Lights

As I said, remarkable overtones. Especially when you see original footage of both incidents.


Now for some more preciously classified top secret goverment memorandum and articles and similar documents.

A US Air Force Security Service article about the encounter by Pilots of the Imperial Iranian Air Force in Sep. 1976 published in the Miji Quarterly testified to UFO's being encountered.

Air Cheif Marshall Lord Dowding, Commander-in-Cheif of the RAF fighter has been reported to state that over 10,000 sightings have been observed concerning UFO's and that most of them denied any credible explanation (in 1954).

An existing Memorandum from Colonel Charles Halt testifies to sensational events in Woodbridge in dec 1980.

Lord Mountbatten testified to observing the landing of an unknown craft at his estate in Hampshire in 1955.

A previously top-secret Dep. of State memorandum testifies to the Ghost Rocket phenomenon in 1946.

General Nathan Twining, who as Commanding General of Air Materiel Command in sep 1947 testified and signed in front of witnesses that the UFO phenomenon was a reality.''


As I said, you talk BS. Prove me wrong.

 

[Reiku]

By the way, I am quite aware of the technical age of the universe. I feel that that 15 billion years is a well-rounded figure and leaves room for error. I have always done this. Many people do.

 

[Reiku]

@Mister --

I'll give this one last go before I just clam up demanding to see your evidence.



As I said, you obviously know nothing about the way science works. You made a claim, therefore all of the onus to support that claim is on you, not the person who disagrees with you. This is called the burden of proof, your claim, your job to do the work.

And you act as if analyzing the work for errors as well as double checking sources isn't work. It is, quite a lot of it. This very attitude tells me that while you claim to at least be knowledgeable about science(though I've yet to see any evidence of that either), you aren't actually a scientist, which is a good thing in my opinion.

So I'm doing my share of the work, you're just shirking on your end.



Yup, I can write too, probably a good deal better than you can(it's sort of my job). I can type up whatever I want and given Poe's Law it's a good bet that a google search would turn up quite a few sites that support it, probably some that even look official(although, perhaps you don't know the difference). Yeah, that's so not going to be a complete waste of my time. Somebody here obviously doesn't know much about the internet, and it isn't me.



....Hence all of the ad hominem attacks. Right, it all makes so much sense now.



Wrong again.

Gosh, getting such an easy one wrong must be harsh for a magnificent mind such as yours.



Really? That's not what I read, and I think I'll trust Hawking over some internet troll who has no qualifications.



No, you're simply not aware of what the scientists are actually saying. You're engaged in confirmation bias, hearing what you want to hear instead of what is actually said.



No, they tell us that the components necessary for our kind of life are incredibly common, but there's a hell of a lot more to it than that, you just don't understand abiogenesis. I think I'll wait for the chemists to work out a good model for abiogenesis before I go around attaching numbers to the thing, they are the experts in that field after all.



And here is where, as a biology enthusiast, I can tell you that you've gone off the deep end into wild speculation. Judging from the sample size we have, which is trillions of life forms that have been evolving for roughly four billion years, you seem to have absolutely no idea how rare intelligence is in nature. Nature is surely capable of producing intelligence, but it only seems to be a useful trait in a tiny percentage of species, namely those like us. We're talking about warmblooded mammals who need to move around and be able to respond to change. Of all of the other forms of life we've seen, the majority of them so incredibly alien that they dwarf what you lot can produce in strangeness, don't seem to need intelligence at all. The most successful branch of the evolutionary tree, namely the bacteria, don't even have proper nervous systems. What makes you think that intelligence will be a quality that natural selection chooses in a completely different environment? You have absolutely no basis for such a hypothesis, in fact to even consider it at this point in time is laughable. We just know too little to take such ideas seriously.



That there is some form of life out there? Yeah, I can buy that I guess. That it's intelligent and capable of visiting us? You need to be looking at the other end of the probability spectrum to find those odds.



Again, you're straying from your vaunted physics territory, you don't seem to know what is physics and what belongs to other fields of science. None of this speaks to the likelihood of abiogenesis at all. It doesn't matter how many species or phyla are on this planet, there was still only one abiogenesis event that we have to work with. One, and it took about half a billion years and the conditions were obviously favorable for it. This is all of the data we have when it comes to how rare or common abiogenesis really is. And, again, none of this even remotely implies that evolution would then produce intelligent species out there, even here it's not exactly a favored trait.



Again, given that you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about here, perhaps you should stop postulating about it. You have literally no idea of just how rare an event it actually is. Beyond that you have no idea what conditions, other than early Earth conditions, might be favorable to abiogenesis and we know that there are infinitely more conditions that are going to be hostile to any slow process. Let's say that the odds are astronomically low, say one if five hundred trillion, just how likely would you say ETs are then?

Well, you'd probably say it's still very high because you have absolutely no clue about the processes involved.



No, when people disagree with you you just accuse them of ignoring the evidence regardless of what they actually posted. You then resort to name calling in an attempt to reduce their arguments in your eyes by reducing their character in your eyes. If that isn't insulting my, and everyone else who reads this thread, intelligence then nothing is.



Well let's see. There's the "claiming to have evidence and then refusing to present it while claiming that you already have" bit that's been going on for over nine pages now. That's pretty well documented and dishonest. Oh, and let's not forget the ad hominems made against virtually everyone who disagrees with you, not exactly honest behavior there.



The problem with wormholes is that you would need a negative mass inside of it to stabilize it long enough to pass through, and even then you'd have no way of knowing where or when you'd end up. A million passages could take you to a million different places or times, not exactly what's needed for intergalactic travel. And all of that assumes that it would be mechanically possible to create and stabilize a wormhole(tearing the fabric of the universe has got to take a lot of energy, no matter which way you come at it from), and I didn't think that we were in the habit of wildly postulating magical technology for our aliens.

Yeah, even though physics isn't my forte, I'm not exactly ignorant about it either.



Again, unless you're going to posit miraculous super technology for our aliens then it's not a valid solution.



Now where did I say that? Oh yeah, I didn't. You obviously don't write much, or read much for that matter, or didn't you notice the quotation marks around the word "evidence" when I was talking about what you dribbled into your keyboard?



Perhaps you need a few things explained to you. Your entire argument and all of the "evidence" you've offered up so far rests on undemonstrated assumptions. In other words, until your premise is demonstrated to be true, nothing you've proffered counts as evidence as it all hinges on that assumption, well, those assumptions. The assumptions that need to be made in order to accept your "evidence" as empirical are as follows:

1. Interstellar and intergalactic travel is possible. Right now this is an unknown, it might be but it might not be.

2. Abiogenesis has occurred elsewhere. This is, again, completely unknown though I would consider it likely so I'd even grant you this one.

3. That abiogenesis event resulted in an alien species more intelligent than we are. And yes, the more is necessary given the necessary time for evolution to produce complex brains(brains here is shorthand for "thinking organ", whatever "they" use as a brain is fine). Again, this is completely unknown and highly unlikely given that intelligence is not a popular trait in high doses.

4. These aliens have not only discovered the key to intergalactic or interstellar(as a best case scenario) travel but have located and decided for apparently completely spurious reasons to come all the way here to spook some locals(apparently they are able to bend space like a Guild Navigator but can't quite figure out optical camouflage). I don't think that I really need to state how obviously pitiable those numbers are, just given the sheer size of the universe and how minuscule our radiowave bubble really is in comparison.

Now, even though I granted you number two your argument still fails on a basic level because numbers one, three, and four are all completely undemonstrated, and yet you try to use evidence which requires those assumptions to demonstrate those assumptions. Circular reasoning much?



Wrong. There may have been historical facts sprinkled in there, but it was almost completely speculation on your part, speculation which, again, requires the above mentioned assumptions to be made before it makes any sort of sense.

And I ignored it because, as I've been telling you over and over again, anyone can type anything on the internet. Even if I had accepted your laundry list of personal interpretations, I would have still asked you for your sources because I'm not going to accept anything that isn't sourced, especially not when it's on such an important topic. Since what I was asking for in the first place was your evidence(in other words, your sources), I fail to see how accepting that load of tripe would have changed anything because I would have still asked for your sources. Preferably in link form.



Well it would help your case if you could give me something other than flares and a Nirvana Fallacy.

http://www.astrobio.net/debate/236/complex-life-elsewhere-in-the-universe



''Frank Drake: I think this is an occasion where that old principal of good science, Occam's Razor, is helpful. Apply Occam's Razor to the question of the origin of life on Earth. We look at the Earth, and with regards to that origin, as best we know, no special or freak circumstances were required. It took water, organics, a source of energy, and a long time. Deep-sea vents are the current favorite and a reasonable place for the origin. But even if they weren't the culprits, the chemists have found a multitude of other pathways that produce the chemistry of life. The challenge seems to be not to find THE pathway, but the one that was the quickest and most productive. The prime point is that nothing special was required. There will be a pathway that works, on Earth and on similar planets. Then, by Occam's Razor, the origin of life on Earth is nothing more than the result of normal processes on the planet. Furthermore, life should appear very frequently on other Earth-like planets. There will be microbial life nearby the solar system.''


''Donald Brownlee: While there is hope and even expectation of nearby extraterrestrial life, the goal of "Rare Earth" was to point out that the universe is fundamentally hostile to life. Most planets and other places in the universe clearly could not support any type of Earth-like creatures. The universe is vast, so there may be many Earth-like places, but they will be widely spaced, and if they are too widely spaced they will be isolated from each other. What fraction of stars harbor Earth-like planets with Earth-like life? Is it one in a hundred, one in a million, or even less? Even the most optimistic have to admit Earth-like environments must be rare.''


''rank Drake: All evidence of the most primitive steps in the first 700 million years of chemical evolution on Earth is apparently lost. We grope towards understanding of that profound gap in our knowledge by working backwards, hypothesizing that there once was an RNA world based on self-catalyzing RNA. But this system evolved from something else, and led to the esoteric DNA-protein world. As David Grinspoon rightly points out, we are not remotely smart enough to hypothesize ab initio the system of the DNA-protein world, or even the RNA world. It was handed to us on a silver platter. This should be a strong warning that we are over our heads when predicting what might have taken place on other worlds. Give us knowledge of another independent origin of life in space, and the doors to great progress in this field may open.''


Arioch says I should shut up, that I don't understand what I am saying and that I don't really understand how rare life is. These scientists are not saying life would not show up. They actually argue that microbial lifeforms will most likely be all over the universe.


''Chris McKay: There is no solid evidence of life elsewhere, but several factors suggest it is common. Organic material is widespread in the interstellar medium and in our own solar system. We have found planetary systems around other sun-like stars. On Earth, microbial life appeared very quickly - probably before 3.8 billion years ago. Also, we know that microbial ecosystems can survive in a variety of environments with liquid water and a suitable chemical energy source or sunlight.

These factors suggest that microbial life - the sort of life the dominated Earth for the first two billion years - is widespread in the stellar neighborhood.''


This scientist argues just this. He believes that whilst intelligent, complex lifeforms are unlikely to be in large numbers, he does believe it will be widespread in the steller neighbourhood. I explained to Arioch, that we don't even need to be bound by the conventional belief that life needs to be Carbon based, as this scientist agrees


''David Grinspoon: I am not convinced that the Earth's carbon-in-water example is the only way for the universe to solve the life riddle. I am not talking about silicon, which is a bad idea, but systems of chemical complexity that we have not thought of, which may not manifest themselves at room temperature in our oxygen atmosphere. ''


He explains that life may have a different chemistry to ourselves. As we have seen so far, it is not that life is argued not to be in abundance over the vast of the cosmos - but rather complex organic life will not be. They do recognize that the Drake Equation predicts that there should be around a million intelligent civilizations in our galaxy alone. Of course, my arguement doesn't need a great amount of civilizations. The arguement I pose requires only one civilization who have had a jump-start in evolution to us. One of the scientists above suggested that

''life appeared very quickly - probably before 3.8 billion years ago''

Now, if there was stable galaxies in the universe after 200 million years had passed, then let us give about the same kind of reasonable length of time. Let's say after 2 billion years, we have our imaginary civilization a further 4 billion years, just rounding it up for good measure. Then let us add just another few billion years on top of this, to allow some room for error..

This would mean that after 8 billion years using this figure, you can expect there is a possibility that there is a civilization that has evolved sufficiently so their brains where of high intellect.

Taking the estimate of when life began on earth, about 4 billion years ago a prokaryote lifeform appeared on Earth. Since then life has simply flourished, atleast 5 times. These have been known as the great mass extinctions. The Homo genus appeared around 2.4 million years ago. The Biotic crisis events (the great mass extinctions) happened most likely within a period of about 30 million years, give or take a few million years. Macrobiotic life still found away, which just shows how stubborn life is when the conditions are perfect for it to live on.

Going back to our figures, I decided that after 8 billion years you might expect there be existing some alien civilization with a reasonable intellect. Modern Man only appeared 200,000 years ago. This is but a fraction of how much time we have allowed our imaginary alien civilization to progress. Not only this, but there is loads of room for error as well. In fact, I have allowed at least 5 billion years for error. You can shift their evolution up the scale if you wanted to and have their headstart maybe a billion years before us, for instance. It should be considered that such a life with this advantage of time on their side could lead to a much more advanced civilization than even ourselves. Again, they don't even need to be carbon-based lifeforms.


My final words on this subject will be, that consider that there is probably around 400-600 billion stars in our galaxy alone. This consists of about 50 billion planets where about 500 million of these planets could exist within a habital zone next to their nieghbouring star; then take into consideration there is about 200-400 billion stars in our galaxy alone.

In the entire universe, there is around 200 billion galaxies in the observable universe. A recent estimate is that it might be even higher, around 500 billion! Knowing that there is 100 billion stars per galaxy gives an approximate total of 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars altogether in the universe. Now, if you think life is rare, then you must think there is some kind of God involved in all of this, or that humans are so special, that we might as well be selfish to think that we are the only life forms out there.

 

[Reiku]

Arioch, I want you to answer my post 284, and if you can't show us the claims that most of that work is based on my speculations, then I'd like to highlight for sciforums members that many statements of yours may not be able to be trusted.

Later, I am going to write up on the physics behind spacetime intergalactic travel. Yesterday we (or maybe I) only got into a brief conversation about it. You were under some delusions that it would require a craft to move at light speed or beyond this and I explained that the equations of relativity don't need to permit this at all. There are some other exotic solutions which you have not considered.

 

[phlogistician]

I deal with physics every day...

Who doesn't? I'm quite a fan of gravity myself.

OK, so what are your academic credentials?

I studied a degree in Physics and Computing, and then worked with Post Grads and Research Physicists in Astronomy as their computing tech for four years, and I've also held several other IT positions in Academia, before moving into the private sector.

You seem to hand wave over established scientific knowledge: that the speed of light is the speed limit for any particle with mass, and that it is practically unattainable thanks to the effect of the Lorentz transformation on mass, which means crossing the vastness of space would take a very long time, assuming it's possible to remotely detect a civilisation worth visiting in the first place.

You then accept vague lights in the sky as evidence of Extra Terrestrial visitation, but have no actual evidence. Some scientist you are.

 

[Reiku]

Who doesn't? I'm quite a fan of gravity myself.


You seem to hand wave over established scientific knowledge: that the speed of light is the speed limit for any particle with mass, and that it is practically unattainable thanks to the effect of the Lorentz transformation on mass, which means crossing the vastness of space would take a very long time, assuming it's possible to remotely detect a civilisation worth visiting in the first place.

You then accept vague lights in the sky as evidence of Extra Terrestrial visitation, but have no actual evidence. Some scientist you are.

Hit and total fucking miss.

You have missed my point entirely. Arioch kept saying that believers just go around ignoring the science which can refute their cases. In all my years of studying physics and all the years I have studied the UFO phenomenon, not once have I seen any evidence to suggest physics is against the idea completely.

Ophiliote then started to insinuate I was uneducated, in a pretty ugly post of his. Again, this is perpetuating the myth that people who believe in UFO's are ill-educated. This is not the case. There are many educated people out there who believe in visitations.

I'm not here for a contest on who has the most knowledge about something. I just find it distasteful that someone would go about assuming the worse about someone's education, rational beliefs or maybe even just general sanity.

I am perfectly sane, (most of the time ) and I consider myself quite rational considering I have a good understanding of physics in general, which I am sure is more that could have been said of Arioch or maybe Ophiolate or whatever you call him.

I think it's time the skeptics here began attacking the evidence a lot more, than resporting to attacking the person. It just shows they are unable to grasp the correct way to debate such issues properly. Needless to say, I meant what I said. Never once have I properly questioned your intellect - maybe your knowledge on the subject I could question, but certainly not your intellect.

 

[phlogistician]

You dodged telling us what your academic qualifications in Science are.

 

[Reiku]

I have no intentions doing that. My personal life has nothing to do with the debate, hence why I said that attacking the person is irrelevant. Not only that, but it defeats the purpose of evaluating the evidence.

 

[Reiku]

Also, as I said, I have no intentions of making this a ''I have more knowledge than you,'' debate.

 

[Reiku]

To my reply to Arioch, I have stated;

''He explains that life may have a different chemistry to ourselves. As we have seen so far, it is not that life is argued not to be in abundance over the vast of the cosmos - but rather complex organic life will not be. They do recognize that the Drake Equation predicts that there should be around a million intelligent civilizations in our galaxy alone. Of course, my arguement doesn't need a great amount of civilizations. The arguement I pose requires only one civilization who have had a jump-start in evolution to us. One of the scientists above suggested that

''life appeared very quickly - probably before 3.8 billion years ago''

Now, if there was stable galaxies in the universe after 200 million years had passed, then let us give about the same kind of reasonable length of time. Let's say after 2 billion years, we have our imaginary civilization a further 4 billion years, just rounding it up for good measure. Then let us add just another few billion years on top of this, to allow some room for error..

This would mean that after 8 billion years using this figure, you can expect there is a possibility that there is a civilization that has evolved sufficiently so their brains where of high intellect.

Taking the estimate of when life began on earth, about 4 billion years ago a prokaryote lifeform appeared on Earth. Since then life has simply flourished, atleast 5 times. These have been known as the great mass extinctions. The Homo genus appeared around 2.4 million years ago. The Biotic crisis events (the great mass extinctions) happened most likely within a period of about 30 million years, give or take a few million years. Macrobiotic life still found away, which just shows how stubborn life is when the conditions are perfect for it to live on.

Going back to our figures, I decided that after 8 billion years you might expect there be existing some alien civilization with a reasonable intellect. Modern Man only appeared 200,000 years ago. This is but a fraction of how much time we have allowed our imaginary alien civilization to progress. Not only this, but there is loads of room for error as well. In fact, I have allowed at least 5 billion years for error. You can shift their evolution up the scale if you wanted to and have their headstart maybe a billion years before us, for instance. It should be considered that such a life with this advantage of time on their side could lead to a much more advanced civilization than even ourselves. Again, they don't even need to be carbon-based lifeforms.


My final words on this subject will be, that consider that there is probably around 400-600 billion stars in our galaxy alone. This consists of about 50 billion planets where about 500 million of these planets could exist within a habital zone next to their nieghbouring star; then take into consideration there is about 200-400 billion stars in our galaxy alone.

In the entire universe, there is around 200 billion galaxies in the observable universe. A recent estimate is that it might be even higher, around 500 billion! Knowing that there is 100 billion stars per galaxy gives an approximate total of 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars altogether in the universe. Now, if you think life is rare, then you must think there is some kind of God involved in all of this, or that humans are so special, that we might as well be selfish to think that we are the only life forms out there. ''


To this, I would like to add we have actually uncovered some possible Earth-Like candidates by studying their blue atmosphere.

Life should not be as rare as he erreneously contemplates. Also take into consideration that that these planets we have identified with rigourous studies that there should be even more planets than this in our galaxy. The idea that life has possibilities that are extremely high in other part of our gaalxy are increasing each time we decide to study some part of it.

 

[phlogistician]

To this, I would like to add we have actually uncovered some possible Earth-Like candidates by studying their blue atmosphere.

Where did you get that impression?

There are two ways to detect planets, wobble and occlusion of the parent star. Neither method gives you the spectra from the planet's atmosphere however.

 

[Ophiolite]

Ophiliote then started to insinuate I was uneducated, in a pretty ugly post of his.

I do beg your pardon. Please forgive me. There was no intention to insinuate. I thought I was making it as a clear assertion. I'll try to avoid such ambiguity in future.

 

[phlogistician]

Also, as I said, I have no intentions of making this a ''I have more knowledge than you,'' debate.

So you have no education in science. Thankyou.

 

[Arioch]

Aw, he was banned, does this mean I should delete the rather long winded, point by point, rebuttal of his post?

 

[phlogistician]

To this, I would like to add we have actually uncovered some possible Earth-Like candidates by studying their blue atmosphere.

You still haven't attempted to justify this claim of yours.

Even the recent discovery of Kepler 22-b does not make such claims.

So it's time for you to substantiate yours.

 

[Arioch]

@phlogistician --

Like that'll ever happen.

 

[Reiku]

You still haven't attempted to justify this claim of yours.

Even the recent discovery of Kepler 22-b does not make such claims.

So it's time for you to substantiate yours.

I read it in a science magazine somewhere.