Extra terrestrial life beyond our blue planet

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The discussion centers on the existence of extraterrestrial life and the validity of UFO sightings. Participants express skepticism about claims of alien encounters, noting that current evidence does not meet scientific standards. While many believe that life must exist elsewhere in the vast universe, the likelihood of meaningful interaction with such life is considered extremely low. Some argue that reports of UFOs are disproportionately concentrated in developed countries, suggesting possible government propaganda, while others counter that sightings occur globally, including in poorer nations. Personal anecdotes of UFO sightings are shared, with one participant recounting a specific experience that they believe was not attributable to known aircraft. The conversation highlights the challenges of interpreting UFO sightings and the need for careful consideration of alternative explanations, emphasizing that while strange events may occur, attributing them to extraterrestrial origins remains speculative. The thread also touches on the potential for life beyond Earth, including microbial forms, and the importance of separating the concept of aliens from UFOs and popular culture narratives.
  • #31


You should listen to Russ, he makes a good point. You also shouldn't be so arrogant to think that you know every known phenomena and every aircraft made by man, and how they would look that you are so sure you've ruled everything out. How can you expect people to accept the account as you say it without proper evidence.

If I took everything you say for the truth, then I go tell a friend, that someone saw something that was beyond nature and man, so it must be aliens, then they go tell someone the same thing, then eventually you have tons of enthusiasts claiming of some rumored siting that could not have been natural or man made, all based on hearsay.
 
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  • #32


I think gtatix is saying that the objects he saw were much faster, in terms of angular speed and not actual speed, than any of the planes he saw. I'd consider that a valuable piece of information and evidence that the objects were not planes. However, gtatix can't say the objects were alien spacecraft because of that; he can only say they weren't the commercial airliners that typically land at Pearson, something that I'd agree with.
 
  • #33


gtatix said:
When it happened, I reported it to Peter Davenport of NUFORC:

Click http://www.nuforc.org/webreports/043/S43202.html" for my report.

Based on your report it sounds like you could have been looking at the red glow of burning fuel coming out of two jet engine planes that were flying away from you, parallel to each other, and then veered off in different directions. You were near an airport, after all.
 
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  • #34


junglebeast said:
Based on your report it sounds like you could have been looking at the red glow of burning fuel coming out of two jet engine planes that were flying away from you, parallel to each other, and then veered off in different directions. You were near an airport, after all.

And this gets at the crux of so many UFO sightings.

There is no doubt that gtatix saw something unfamiliar and downright strange. Let's not that thought go by too quickly ... it was strange. Whatever event occurred that night might very well have been a one-timer - maybe no one's seen anything quite like it, and possibly no one will again.

But there's strange and there's strange.

It is highly, highly implausible that gtatix looked up just in time to see two planes exhausting their fuel, then pealing off in different directions at angles that, from his vantage point, looked impossible. It just sounds like you're reaching, yes?

But surely, even gtatix can see that seeing an alien spacecraft is orders of magnitude more implausible. And that it is orders of magnitude longer of a reach for an explanation.
 
  • #35


The truth will always be out there :wink:. Depends on what you define as 'alien' though. I guess there is a better likelihood to find bacterial type life forms rather than intelligent life. There are some intriguing articles if you are interested.

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0601022v1

The above paper was about the Red Rain phenomenon in Kerala. India.

There is an idea out there, called panspermia, that we might ourselves be descendants of alien life forms that settled on Earth.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=did-life-come-from-anothe
 
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  • #36


And this gets at the crux of so many UFO sightings.

I really hope this thread does not become some another debate on the validity of UFOs. So many threads on this forum are all about UFOs. :cry:

People should stop linking aliens to UFOs and little green men, there is so much potential for a nice debate on DNA, genetics and all the different ideas floating around related to the idea of extra terrestrial life.
 
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  • #37


math_04 said:
I really hope this thread does not become some another debate on the validity of UFOs. So many threads on this forum are all about UFOs. :cry:

People should stop linking aliens to UFOs and little green men, there is so much potential for a nice debate on DNA, genetics and all the different ideas floating around related to the idea of extra terrestrial life.

Do you associate UFOs with aliens?

By my count, 4 out of 28 threads on the first page are dedicated to UFOs.
 
  • #38


DaveC426913 said:
It is highly, highly implausible that gtatix looked up just in time to see two planes exhausting their fuel, then pealing off in different directions at angles that, from his vantage point, looked impossible. It just sounds like you're reaching, yes?

I think you mean "improbable" not "implausible." Implausible means "not physically possible." My explanation is certainly possible/plausible.

Statistically speaking, the probability of observing an exact event in a real number space is infinitesimally small for any event, even if you are just sampling a well conditioned normal distribution! So, while it is true that it has low probability...there was also an infinitesimally small probability that I would wake up this morning at exactly 9:36:01:..., yet I did.

Essentially, to apply statistics in a meaningful way here, one would have to ask "how likely is it that any human being on any night of the year on any year ever happens to see 2 planes flying away in the sky?"
 
  • #39


junglebeast said:
I think you mean "improbable" not "implausible." Implausible means "not physically possible."
No. Implausible means 'difficult to believe', which is exactly what I meant to say.

It is (at least, in the general scheme of things) hard to believe that what he saw was an event like two planes venting fuel andf then pealing off in different directions.

The reason it is implausible as an explanation of the eyewtiness account is because it is improbable.



junglebeast said:
Statistically speaking, the probability of observing an exact event in a real number space is infinitesimally small for any event, even if you are just sampling a well conditioned normal distribution! So, while it is true that it has low probability...there was also an infinitesimally small probability that I would wake up this morning at exactly 9:36:01:..., yet I did.

Essentially, to apply statistics in a meaningful way here, one would have to ask "how likely is it that any human being on any night of the year on any year ever happens to see 2 planes flying away in the sky?"
This is exactly what I'm saying, yes.
 
  • #40


The upshot here is:

No one is saying gtatix did not see a UFO.

No one is denying that gtatix saw something very strange and likely very rare.

But what he saw was so rare in fact, that any explanation of it is likely to sound completely implausible because it will require some highly unlikely events.

But we know for a fact that some very unlikely events did happen (even if it is simply the conflagrence of a few rather more common things such as planes venting fuel and a peculiar angle from which they are observed.)

Witnessing a pair of planes venting fuel etc. etc. is likely extremely rare and therefore pretty implausible.

Witnessing UFO is somewhere between 'incredibly rare' and 'zero' (if there are no UFOs then the occurence of the event is zero) and therefore extremely implausible.

We go with the one that is less implausible.
 
  • #41
Oops, my bad with the definition of implausibility.

DaveC426913 said:
Witnessing a pair of planes venting fuel etc. etc. is likely extremely rare and therefore pretty implausible.

Now hold on...who said anything about venting fuel? This is what it looks like when fuel is vented:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/F-111-Fuel-Dump,-Avalon,-VIC-23.03.2007.jpg

Ok, that's pretty impressive...not at all like the "subtle fuzzy red glow" in the incident report. I was just referring to the natural glow that comes from a jet engine. It was reported that there were two red glows close together, which then veered off in different directions. All that is required is to have 2 F16's flying side by side, as they often do, before veering off.

Observe the red glow:
http://www.tristesse.com/~keith/airshows/f16-1.jpg

For a brighter red glow, they can turn on the afterburners:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/FA18_on_afterburner.jpg
 
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  • #42


junglebeast said:
Now hold on...who said anything about venting fuel?
My bad. We're even. :biggrin:
 
  • #43


Life must exist elsewhere. There isn't only one of anything in the universe so it makes no sense that there is only one planet in the universe that has life.
 
  • #44


What would iyou say if you see green light on the sky at night , twice the size of a star ,
going much faster than an airplane moving left and right how suddenly disappears? I saw that two times , so as my friends who were with me at the time. The people just can't understand the universe and that there might be at least 10 civilizations only in our galaxy.
If aliens really landed on our planet , with that kind of tehnology they could destroy us in seconds - why didn't they ?
 
  • #45


fillindablank said:
Life must exist elsewhere. There isn't only one of anything in the universe
How would you know? If there's only one of something, the chances are highly unlikely it would be nearby.

BTW, there's only one DaveC426913. :smile:

fillindablank said:
so it makes no sense that there is only one planet in the universe that has life.
The universe is not obliged to make sense.
 
  • #46


DaveC426913 said:
How would you know? If there's only one of something, the chances are highly unlikely it would be nearby.

and it would then be exceedingly rare proving my point. Since there isn't one of anything in the known universe other than a planet with life I would say it's much more likely that we aren't unique rather than we are. And there are soon to be 7 billion virtually identical to DaveC426913 (just with a different number).


DaveC426913 said:
The universe is not obliged to make sense.

Obliged? Maybe not. But every day as we learn more, more of it does make sense than not. If it doesn't make sense it's because we don't know enough yet.
 
  • #47


fillindablank said:
Since there isn't one of anything in the known universe other than a planet with life
This is simply nonsense. How can you make such a leap of faith?


fillindablank said:
Obliged? Maybe not. But every day as we learn more, more of it does make sense than not. If it doesn't make sense it's because we don't know enough yet.
Precisely. Which is why things that (right now) don't make sense (such as us being alone) are no indication that those things (i.e. us being alone) are wrong.
As we know more, it will begin to make sense why we're alone.

I'm not arguing that we are alone, I'm merely pointing out that your logic is flawed.
 
  • #48


junglebeast said:
I there was also an infinitesimally small probability that I would wake up this morning at exactly 9:36:01:..., yet I did.

EsQUOTE]

Assuming you sleep 8 hours per night. That probability is 1:1,728,000 unless your clock shows tenths of a second?
what is the definition of infinitesimal?

with aplogies to Drake...
Life can exist in what we would consider inhospitable environs such as the bottom of the ocean and under the Antarctic ice cap.

There is evidence of past life on Mars (the fosolized bacterium on a martian rock found in Antarctica) unproven I admit. but not debunked either.

Out of 9 planets, one has life for certain (Earth) one may have had life (Mars) that's at least one out of nine, possibly two.

an estimated 80% of stars have planets. An estimated 100 billion stars in our galaxy yeilds 80 billion planets.

At least one extraterrestrial planet is known to have water which is normally required for life here on Earth.

the universe is only 13.7 billion years old and the Earth is 5.5billion so it seems we are here remarkably soon after the initial inflation period.

The universe has a minimum radius of curvature of 100billion light years with galaxies distributed in a roughly homogenious distribution amounting to how many possibilities?


all this leeds me to think that the probability that life exists no where else in the uiverse but here on Earth is infinitesimally small.


but then that's just me... :)
 

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