Ok 2020 was a fustercluck of epic proportions and i had things on my mind during it, like my mothers' declining health and eventual death.
Now that being said, i keep hearing stories about how the US military and some world government finally admitted that alien intelligence exists and alien vessels have been visually recorded.
I tried my bing fu skills and got conflicting reports both 'confirming' and denying this in near equal amounts. I saw some video that was supposed to be military footage of a jet's guncam tracking something that didn't look like a plane. Then again I also saw a pretty convincing image of a jet fighter tracking the disco enterprise..
So, my brothers, if some of you weren't as distracted in 2020 as i was, can you give me any solid answers on the question of whether or not alien existence was admitted in 2020? You'd think that would have been the one story didn;t get tired of following last year, but i had other things on my mind.
If governments formally admitted to aliens beyond microbial then you can bet it wouldn't be hidden in the backwaters of the internet conspiracy websites.
I do seem to recall some interview happened with someone key high up and he gave one of those "he smiled" type answers to a question that made everyone go "Ohh could be real". In the sort of same way parents say Santa Clause is real to kids, look there's a real reindeer they do exist the first time kids see them or such.
But yeah aliens and alien ships being confirmed by the government? No chance.
Official government investigations into UFOs perfectly reasonable and expected; governments experimenting with spherical or abnormal shaped aircraft - perfectly normal and heck even way back to WWII the Nazis were developing and messing with some saucer shaped aircraft on the design board.
Wikipedia wrote:In December 2020, Eshed claimed in an interview with Israeli national newspaper Yediot Aharonot that the United States government had been in contact with extraterrestrial life for years and had signed secret agreements with a "Galactic Federation" in order to do experiments on Earth, and that there is a joint base underground on Mars where they collaborate with American astronauts.[20] He also stated that US president Donald Trump was aware of this and was "on the verge" of informing everyone of their existence, but was stopped by the "Galactic Federation", who wished to prevent mass hysteria.[21]
Overread wrote: If governments formally admitted to aliens beyond microbial then you can bet it wouldn't be hidden in the backwaters of the internet conspiracy websites.
I do seem to recall some interview happened with someone key high up and he gave one of those "he smiled" type answers to a question that made everyone go "Ohh could be real". In the sort of same way parents say Santa Clause is real to kids, look there's a real reindeer they do exist the first time kids see them or such.
But yeah aliens and alien ships being confirmed by the government? No chance.
Official government investigations into UFOs perfectly reasonable and expected; governments experimenting with spherical or abnormal shaped aircraft - perfectly normal and heck even way back to WWII the Nazis were developing and messing with some saucer shaped aircraft on the design board.
Speaking of ww2, i hear that the "foo fighters" are still unexplained. Allies thought they were nazi, nazis thought they were allied.
I didn't totally believe it but wanted to get it to stop nagging at me.
Speaking of ww2, i hear that the "foo fighters" are still unexplained. Allies thought they were nazi, nazis thought they were allied.
Not surprising in that both sides in a war would conduct their own secret research into new aircraft and weapons. So its very possible that pilots on both sides saw hints of both the enemy and their own sides developments. Sometimes by accident and perhaps sometimes by intent (eg you're testing a new stealth model so you fly it near to your current pilots - if they don't see it it works; if they do you get to have their full reports on what they saw, how they saw it etc...).
So people outside of the development programs would likely consider them Foo Fighters or UFOs even if others in different departments (not necessarily higher ranks) are well aware of what they are.
It's even very probable that different secret teams would have different projects along similar lines and might well end up knowing only a limited number of "secret" projects.
The agency you’re looking for is AATIP and was a program which studied unidentified aircraft. There was several videos of navy pilot footage which was confirmed by military personnel.
As for the government admitting they were aliens? No way.
All that was admitted was that these were not US aircraft.
Nobody knows what they are, and no one wants to admit they might be extraterrestrial.
There was a sensationalized series about it on History. But you should be able to find the footage and has supposedly been confirmed as legit.
That's probably all it actually is. Multiple secret development groups, and all interaction between the groups is filed under the convenient cover of "UFO reports".
Frankly, without the cultural phenomenon of UFOs it probably would be a lot tougher to keep a lid on top secret development of aircraft. You can easily brush off anybody who does see it as "crazy" because they're just claiming to have seen aliens. Meanwhile you get to have a good snicker while you file the reports in a UFO folder.
Matt Swain wrote: I saw some video that was supposed to be military footage of a jet's guncam tracking something that didn't look like a plane. Then again I also saw a pretty convincing image of a jet fighter tracking the disco enterprise..
Thunderf00t does a pretty good debunking of the UFO videos.
Ghool wrote: The agency you’re looking for is AATIP and was a program which studied unidentified aircraft. There was several videos of navy pilot footage which was confirmed by military personnel.
As for the government admitting they were aliens? No way.
All that was admitted was that these were not US aircraft.
Nobody knows what they are, and no one wants to admit they might be extraterrestrial.
There was a sensationalized series about it on History. But you should be able to find the footage and has supposedly been confirmed as legit.
Legit UFO footage is easy to find. Its just that the pop culture mentality doesn't understand that UFO is what it says on the tin. An object that is not identified.
It has squat to do with aliens, and everything to do with looking out for hazards when you're flying at 500+ mph. And if they're also going the same speed in a different direction in impaired visibility (night, fog, clouds), you've got seconds or less to identify them, especially if you're not on the ball with visual spotting.
Wikipedia wrote:In December 2020, Eshed claimed in an interview with Israeli national newspaper Yediot Aharonot that the United States government had been in contact with extraterrestrial life for years and had signed secret agreements with a "Galactic Federation" in order to do experiments on Earth, and that there is a joint base underground on Mars where they collaborate with American astronauts.[20] He also stated that US president Donald Trump was aware of this and was "on the verge" of informing everyone of their existence, but was stopped by the "Galactic Federation", who wished to prevent mass hysteria.[21]
The most unbelievable part of that whole story is the last half of the last sentence.
Years ago during a flying lesson I noticed what appeared to be a large reflective silver disk above me at about my 2:00. It was moving erratically in weird directions...nothing that a plane could do. I pointed it out to my flying instructor, who did a double take on it.
At the same time, we said "balloon". It was a mylar kids balloon that had floated up a few thousand feet and was bouncing around in the breeze. Because it was against a clear sky, it was hard at first to determine if it was a small object close by or a larger one farther away. Darned it if didn't match those old "flying saucer" sightings in just about every single aspect.
Lots of things can be in the sky, and some of it may look weird at first. "It's aliens" is a pretty colossal leap.
Ghool wrote: The agency you’re looking for is AATIP and was a program which studied unidentified aircraft. There was several videos of navy pilot footage which was confirmed by military personnel.
As for the government admitting they were aliens? No way.
All that was admitted was that these were not US aircraft.
Nobody knows what they are, and no one wants to admit they might be extraterrestrial.
There was a sensationalized series about it on History. But you should be able to find the footage and has supposedly been confirmed as legit.
Legit UFO footage is easy to find. Its just that the pop culture mentality doesn't understand that UFO is what it says on the tin. An object that is not identified.
It has squat to do with aliens, and everything to do with looking out for hazards when you're flying at 500+ mph. And if they're also going the same speed in a different direction in impaired visibility (night, fog, clouds), you've got seconds or less to identify them, especially if you're not on the ball with visual spotting.
That’s my take as well, and it very likely has nothing to do with aliens.
I watched some of that show which was sensationalist BS meant to improve ratings.
It’s clear that all of these shows have an agenda to push. But I still watch Ancient Aliens simply for the interesting sites they visit.
As for aliens? You’d think a super advanced civilization wouldn’t bother wasting time and fuel on a backwards planet and species that still goes to war with itself.
So yes, I agree that UFOs are just that - unidentified.
Aliens is a massive stretch.
Wikipedia wrote:In December 2020, Eshed claimed in an interview with Israeli national newspaper Yediot Aharonot that the United States government had been in contact with extraterrestrial life for years and had signed secret agreements with a "Galactic Federation" in order to do experiments on Earth, and that there is a joint base underground on Mars where they collaborate with American astronauts.[20] He also stated that US president Donald Trump was aware of this and was "on the verge" of informing everyone of their existence, but was stopped by the "Galactic Federation", who wished to prevent mass hysteria.[21]
Not much of federation when each planet would be in essence independent without realistlc contact with each other. While you could travel to other side of galaxy in your lifetime others outside your spaceship would age tens of thousands of years
lord_blackfang wrote: You probably don't spend thousands of years to travel to a different planet just so you can do butt stuff on local drunkards.
Wild speculation theory,
What if, the aliens who come to earth and probe the local drunkards are the space version of the local boys who go cow tipping and there's nothing nefarious about it? It's just a bunch off dumbass kids, drunk of space beer, fresh off from space drivers ed, bored out of their minds in a hodunk nebula where nothing happens and they have nothing to look forward to but following Ghlock and Schleel into the minnes, having a laugh at those goof aliens on the blue planet
In my younger years I was absolutely convinced of all kinds of phenomenon - UFOs, Bigfoot, etc.
However, as the years have progressed and everyone walking around the face of the planet has a high-quality portable visual resording device, available within an instant, their cellphone, my conviction has dropped to zero.
Why do we still harken back to images and footage taken decades ago? Because new and resonable footage does not exist. Sure, there are a number you can find on Youtube, but they are suspect at best.
If UFO and Bigfoot were truly running amok, we would have countless new video evidence all over the media.
But, we do not and I can surmise the reason why.
Are there aliens out there - yeah, high liklihood given the expanse of the universe. Do they have life that has come here? I am still waiting for inconclusive evidence. You cannot use the example of life on earth and what humans have evolved to in a short millenia and other life should have surely developed the capacity to travel the stars when dinosaurs roamed the earth for hundreds of millions of years and never evolved past basic animals.
There is a theory that we haven't seen any aliens yet because all civilisations collapse before achieving interstellar travel. Pretty depressing but still an interesting concept and one that people can probs consider likely considering the state of humanity.
Overread wrote: If governments formally admitted to aliens beyond microbial then you can bet it wouldn't be hidden in the backwaters of the internet conspiracy websites.
I do seem to recall some interview happened with someone key high up and he gave one of those "he smiled" type answers to a question that made everyone go "Ohh could be real". In the sort of same way parents say Santa Clause is real to kids, look there's a real reindeer they do exist the first time kids see them or such.
But yeah aliens and alien ships being confirmed by the government? No chance.
Official government investigations into UFOs perfectly reasonable and expected; governments experimenting with spherical or abnormal shaped aircraft - perfectly normal and heck even way back to WWII the Nazis were developing and messing with some saucer shaped aircraft on the design board.
Speaking of ww2, i hear that the "foo fighters" are still unexplained. Allies thought they were nazi, nazis thought they were allied.
I didn't totally believe it but wanted to get it to stop nagging at me.
I believe you'll find that the Foo Fighters are a band led by Dave Grohl, who are in the running to enter the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame this year.
Ghool wrote: So yes, I agree that UFOs are just that - unidentified.
That's a bit like agreeing that a table is a table. The point you were replying to is that UFOs are, by very definition, unidentified. That's not something that needs to be agreed... it''s what the acronym actually means.
Confusion happens because people conflate 'UFO' with 'Alien'.
"...Loeb has spent a lot of time thinking about how to explore the interstellar wilds. A prolific astrophysicist at Harvard University and chair of the advisory committee for Breakthrough Starshot, a project that aims to send probes to the nearest star system, Loeb envisions shooting powerful lasers at lightsails – thin, reflective spacecraft akin to mirrors – to accelerate them to star-hopping speed.
So when a bizarre object from interstellar space hurtled through our solar system in 2017, Loeb readily admits that he was primed to see it as a glimpse of alien technology – an extraterrestrial lightsail – rather than some errant space rock.
In his book Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth, Loeb lays out his case that the unusual traveller, named ’Oumuamua after the Hawaiian word for scout, was an artificial relic crafted by savvy aliens. While this exotic explanation of the object serves as the backbone of the book, Loeb's broader argument grows out of his bewilderment with the blowback to his hypothesis, which he regards as an omen of imaginative decay and anti-alien bias in the scientific community. “The search for extraterrestrial life has never been more than an oddity to the vast majority of scientists,” he writes. “To them, it is a subject worthy of, at best, glancing interest and at worst, outright derision.”
Sceptics who fit that description should take seriously the meticulous defence of the alien origin story offered in Extraterrestrial. To bolster his case, Loeb points to the unexplained properties of the first known interstellar visitor: its extreme dimensions, its perplexing brightness, and the dramatic speed boost that sent it careening out of our telescopic sights.
Proponents of a natural origin for ’Oumuamua have suggested that it was an elongated planetary splinter or a loose cloud of dust grains. Loeb questions whether an alien origin is any more far-fetched than these explanations, given that scientists have never seen splinters or clouds of this nature inside the solar system. Scientists have also speculated that 'Oumuamua's sudden acceleration in the outer solar system was caused by bursts of evaporating ice, a phenomenon known as outgassing. As a counterpoint, Loeb points to the lack of evidence picked up by telescopes of an outgassing event.
Like an astronomical Sherlock Holmes, a character often invoked in the book, Loeb concludes that “the simplest explanation for these peculiarities is that the object was created by an intelligent civilisation not of this Earth.” You don't have to share his conviction to be impressed by the breadth of his argument.
Loeb is less successful in casting the controversy he has sparked as a sign of myopic reluctance, within academic circles, to concede that humans might not be the only sentient, spacefaring beings in the universe. Throughout Extraterrestrial, he returns to the refrain “and yet it deviated” to describe 'Oumuamua: a nod to the legend that Galileo muttered “And yet it moves,” referring to Earth, in response to his coerced recantation of the sun-centric model of the solar system
Loeb makes clear that he does not consider himself to be a neo-Galileo. And yet he sees parallels between Galileo's critics and his own. “Recall the clerics who refused to look through Galileo's telescope,” he writes. “The scientific community's prejudice or closed-mindedness – however you want to describe it – is particularly pervasive and powerful when it comes to the search for alien life, especially intelligent life. Many researchers refuse to even consider the possibility that a bizarre object or phenomenon might be evidence of an advanced civilisation.”
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) spent decades on the fringes of science, in part because of the relative lack of empirical methods available to constrain doubts about aliens during the 20th century. Over the past two decades, however, an explosion of observational techniques and discoveries – many of which Loeb describes – has revolutionised astrobiology and SETI.
Thousands of exoplanets (worlds that orbit other stars) have been detected since the 1990s; some telescopes are now explicitly tasked with assessing their habitability. A central mission of NASA's Perseverance rover, due to land on Mars in February, is to look for signs of Martian life. China has built the world's largest single-dish telescope to scan the skies for evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence.
On Venus, the possible detection of a chemical associated with life has evoked visions of aerial microbes in the Venusian skies. In the star system Alpha Centauri – the target of Breakthrough Starshot – a recently discovered exoplanet is sloughing off radio signals, stoking speculation about alien “technosignatures...."
Overread wrote: If governments formally admitted to aliens beyond microbial then you can bet it wouldn't be hidden in the backwaters of the internet conspiracy websites.
I do seem to recall some interview happened with someone key high up and he gave one of those "he smiled" type answers to a question that made everyone go "Ohh could be real". In the sort of same way parents say Santa Clause is real to kids, look there's a real reindeer they do exist the first time kids see them or such.
But yeah aliens and alien ships being confirmed by the government? No chance.
Official government investigations into UFOs perfectly reasonable and expected; governments experimenting with spherical or abnormal shaped aircraft - perfectly normal and heck even way back to WWII the Nazis were developing and messing with some saucer shaped aircraft on the design board.
Speaking of ww2, i hear that the "foo fighters" are still unexplained. Allies thought they were nazi, nazis thought they were allied.
I didn't totally believe it but wanted to get it to stop nagging at me.
I believe you'll find that the Foo Fighters are a band led by Dave Grohl, who are in the running to enter the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame this year.
Gert wrote: There is a theory that we haven't seen any aliens yet because all civilisations collapse before achieving interstellar travel. Pretty depressing but still an interesting concept and one that people can probs consider likely considering the state of humanity.
There's all manner of Fermi Paradox solutions, but the fact remains that it only takes a single species in the galaxy to not wipe themselves out and they'd colonize the galaxy in a few million years (a blip in time, really). That's without faster than light travel.
Now the notion that we'd actually notice if this happened is dubious, as most futurists assume that aliens would construct Dyson Swarms or other megastructures we'd notice. If they just terraformed useful worlds and/or constructed new planets whole cloth, we probably wouldn't notice them at all.
As said by the late Stephen Hawking; if there is a conspiracy by world governments to cover up evidence of alien life, they are doing a better job at that than they can at anything else.
Gert wrote: There is a theory that we haven't seen any aliens yet because all civilisations collapse before achieving interstellar travel. Pretty depressing but still an interesting concept and one that people can probs consider likely considering the state of humanity.
There's all manner of Fermi Paradox solutions, but the fact remains that it only takes a single species in the galaxy to not wipe themselves out and they'd colonize the galaxy in a few million years (a blip in time, really). That's without faster than light travel.
Now the notion that we'd actually notice if this happened is dubious, as most futurists assume that aliens would construct Dyson Swarms or other megastructures we'd notice. If they just terraformed useful worlds and/or constructed new planets whole cloth, we probably wouldn't notice them at all.
Well you figure an interstellar alien empire could have risen, spread across half the milky way, and collapsed, and we won't know about it for some time because the light from that half of the galaxy hasn't got here yet. Also the Fermi Paradox/Great Filter theory has more holes than 'moon landing was faked' theory anyways.
As far as I’m aware the Fermi paradox was never a theory, but an observation to provoke inquiry. There are a lot of assumptions in SETI and any of them could greatly influence the chances of detection; for example at the moment we are very rapidly moving away from high powered broadcasts for TV etc. in favour of streaming, which uses much lower power, local ,network transmissions that are exponentially harder to detect at long distance. If we’re a “typical” technological civilisation, then it’s feasible that high power, indiscriminate transmissions may only be present for a century or two out of the entire lifetime of the civilisation. That makes detection much, much, harder.
"
Like an astronomical Sherlock Holmes, a character often invoked in the book, Loeb concludes that “the simplest explanation for these peculiarities is that the object was created by an intelligent civilisation not of this Earth.” You don't have to share his conviction to be impressed by the breadth of his argument.
Sigh.
That argument has no breadth. That particular Holmes argument (which he's trying badly to ape), is a gross misapplication of logic
The _actual_ simplest explanation is that he doesn't know the cause, not that his biased guess is correct, simply because he wants to believe it. We don't know something is far more likely than a specific extra-solar object being an alien probe.
He's basically trying to make the historical go to for the unknown - it was for religious reasons - equivalent for space being "aliens".
And yeah I'm not surprised there's pushback. I think scientific communities and even fans have had enough of cheap thrills arguments like "ooh aliens" being thrown around. Plus those who do want to believe are likely tired of the lies and fakes; whilst those who don't have seen the impacts that such viewpoints can have in twisting people's perceptions of reality.
Ergo I'd argue most of Dakka's membership can watch something like "Ancient Aliens" and see it purely as entertainment and not factual. Yet there's a portion of the population who are ignorant and easily led enough that they will see it as a potential factual documentary. Even if they don't believe a single episode as such, the concept of the theory is something they subscribe too.
Jadenim wrote: As far as I’m aware the Fermi paradox was never a theory, but an observation to provoke inquiry. There are a lot of assumptions in SETI and any of them could greatly influence the chances of detection; for example at the moment we are very rapidly moving away from high powered broadcasts for TV etc. in favour of streaming, which uses much lower power, local ,network transmissions that are exponentially harder to detect at long distance. If we’re a “typical” technological civilisation, then it’s feasible that high power, indiscriminate transmissions may only be present for a century or two out of the entire lifetime of the civilisation. That makes detection much, much, harder.
Even our strongest broadcasts wouldn't be detectable by other solar systems in the first place.
lord_blackfang wrote: You probably don't spend thousands of years to travel to a different planet just so you can do butt stuff on local drunkards.
Wild speculation theory,
What if, the aliens who come to earth and probe the local drunkards are the space version of the local boys who go cow tipping and there's nothing nefarious about it? It's just a bunch off dumbass kids, drunk of space beer, fresh off from space drivers ed, bored out of their minds in a hodunk nebula where nothing happens and they have nothing to look forward to but following Ghlock and Schleel into the minnes, having a laugh at those goof aliens on the blue planet
Douglas Adams came up with that idea over forty years ago.
Maybe they've been using earth for a real time strategy game for millennia. Different factions pick a region of earth and its people, and try to elevate it to prominence under complex game rules.
I wish i could say that was my idea, but roger zelazny kind of invented it a long time before RTS games were a thing in the story "The game of blood and dust."
lord_blackfang wrote: You probably don't spend thousands of years to travel to a different planet just so you can do butt stuff on local drunkards.
Wild speculation theory,
What if, the aliens who come to earth and probe the local drunkards are the space version of the local boys who go cow tipping and there's nothing nefarious about it? It's just a bunch off dumbass kids, drunk of space beer, fresh off from space drivers ed, bored out of their minds in a hodunk nebula where nothing happens and they have nothing to look forward to but following Ghlock and Schleel into the minnes, having a laugh at those goof aliens on the blue planet
Douglas Adams came up with that idea over forty years ago.
It's not a particularly practical one under known physics unless these space teens are immortal, unbelievably bored and have easy access to planet killer level hardware.
Strg Alt wrote: No aliens visited humanity in the past. Period. If you believe in flying saucers you might as well believe in Santa Claus.
A lack of evidence from something we already know so little about, is not evidence.
While I myself think that it's a *very* remote possibility, it still can't be excluded.
Until we have a time machine, no one can know that with 100% certainty.
If anything, I believe in a remote and advanced human or hominid civilization more than aliens when it comes to certain myths. But one can't exclude the possibility of our ancestors being visited by aliens in the remote past. Some of their stories say they did, and until we can 100% prove that wrong, it's a possibility.
Regardless of the plausibility, we should be open to the theory.
Rigid opinions and belief systems do not promote scientific progress.
Strg Alt wrote: No aliens visited humanity in the past. Period. If you believe in flying saucers you might as well believe in Santa Claus.
A lack of evidence from something we already know so little about, is not evidence.
While I myself think that it's a *very* remote possibility, it still can't be excluded.
Until we have a time machine, no one can know that with 100% certainty.
If anything, I believe in a remote and advanced human or hominid civilization more than aliens when it comes to certain myths. But one can't exclude the possibility of our ancestors being visited by aliens in the remote past. Some of their stories say they did, and until we can 100% prove that wrong, it's a possibility.
Regardless of the plausibility, we should be open to the theory.
Rigid opinions and belief systems do not promote scientific progress.
Visited us for what? To have a chat? This doesn't make any sense at all. If aliens would come to our planet, they would colonize it immediately.
There are very few planets in habitable zones like our Earth. Other than that there are more conditions needed to enable evolution to take place. In addition life itself to evolve into higher organisms is no small feat.
Space travel is a highly dangerous affair for organisms. So aliens zipping through space belongs to the realm of science-fiction. That's why deep space is explored by robot probes.
Scientists have listened for radio beam emissions for centuries which could originate from aliens. No luck so far. Do alien life forms exist? Absolutely yes. Bacteria & Archaea come to mind.
Strg Alt wrote:Visited us for what? To have a chat? This doesn't make any sense at all. If aliens would come to our planet, they would colonize it immediately.
.
I think you answered your own question here - colonization? Possibly resources? Science?
How do we know 100% that this already didn't happen?
How do we know that entire purpose of said probes wasn't to colonize habitable worlds?
Strg Alt wrote:There are very few planets in habitable zones like our Earth. Other than that there are more conditions needed to enable evolution to take place. In addition life itself to evolve into higher organisms is no small feat.
Absolutely. But our current knowledge of what's actually out there is so limited in scope, we can't really draw definitive conclusions.
Strg Alt wrote:Space travel is a highly dangerous affair for organisms. So aliens zipping through space belongs to the realm of science-fiction. That's why deep space is explored by robot probes.
Who said it was organic life forms? It could have been robots, AI controlled organics, or who-knows-what?
I never said they had to be non-robotic. Or cybernetically enhanced.
Strg Alt wrote:Scientists have listened for radio beam emissions for centuries which could originate from aliens. No luck so far. Do alien life forms exist? Absolutely yes. Bacteria & Archaea come to mind.
Again I will point out that our technology is far too crude to even make an attempt at detecting civilizations more advanced than ours. Hell, even civilizations less advanced than our own.
And I completely agree with you.
There is such a thing as keeping an open mind, and being able to question your own beliefs and our rigid systems of consensus.
The fact is, there is the *possibility* that we could have been colonized in the distant past. Is it very plausible? Not really.
In fact, it really doesn't make sense. Neither does quantum mechanics. And the fight against that was strong and fierce for many years.
And it took nearly a century for it to be commonly accepted fact. Should quantum mechanics work? Not in any common sense way.
But that doesn't mean it can't happen. Ever. No way. Ever. Because QM was proven right, and indeed things at micro-scale don't make sense at macro-scale.
The possibility is still there that we were visited/colonized in the past. I'd rather be open to whatever is then close myself off from what might possibly be truth.
Does it mean that my belief system is now compromised?
Without open minds progress is stifled. Seems that it's a hard point to get across I guess.
But I guess these days the term Devil's Advocate seems to be lost on some folks.
Visited us for what? To have a chat? This doesn't make any sense at all. If aliens would come to our planet, they would colonize it immediately.
So... have you set up house permanently in every place that you've ever visited?
Human researchers travel all over the world studying all sorts of things without bothering to colonise the places they visit. There are any number of reasons that an outside civilisation might have wanted to visit without actually taking over the place. We could well be an alien anthropologist hot spot and just not know it.
There are very few planets in habitable zones like our Earth.
That we know of. Our methods of finding planets in other star systems are still pretty crude, extremely hit-and-miss at the best of times, and not particularly good for finding anything other than larger planets.
Space travel is a highly dangerous affair for organisms. So aliens zipping through space belongs to the realm of science-fiction. That's why deep space is explored by robot probes.
Space travel is highlight dangerous for us because our technology for doing so is still rather primitive. Air travel was also a highly dangerous affair, once upon a time. Technology improves. If we're assuming that a civilisation has the technology to travel between solar systems in a reasonable timeframe to begin with, it's also reasonable to assume they've worked out a few more of the kinks than we have so far.
Or, as Ghool said, they used robots.
Scientists have listened for radio beam emissions for centuries which could originate from aliens. No luck so far.
By the same token, I've come to the conclusion that my next door neighbours don't actually exist, because I've been sitting here for an hour with a glass held up to my ear, and I haven't heard a television from over there at all.
To be clear, I'm not saying we have been visited by aliens, because I've yet to see any evidence that this is actually the case. But it certainly can't be dismissed out of hand simply because we lack the technology to do so.
My default stance on UFO discussions is do not engage. UFO does not mean aliens, it means unidentified, and there are many things in the air that we can't explain. Seems like a leap to assume a space-faring race decided to come loiter on our planet and probe our people.
Two things that surfaced recently that seem open for strong skepticism.
- The Tic Tac videos
- The stories about Nitinol / Bigelow Aerospace
The Tic Tac videos have been around for a while, what got my attention was the fact US legislators were discussing them. They asserted we don't know who made this or where it could have come from.
The way I read the situation, this is not aliens. A program is looking for funding and this was the best way to get attention. News reports are a great way to manufacture urgency. No way to say what was on those HUDs but we absolutely know how decisions on Federal funding happen.
Stories about Nitinol have been around for a while and the name came up again based on some FOIA requests in relation to Bigelow Aerospace.
I lived in Las Vegas and know people from Bigelow. They're engineers, not research scientists. There's no way they were handed a deposit of strange metal and asked to figure it out.
Bigelow does build space capsules and makes some pretty bold decisions on what materials to use in constructing them. They do some contracting on components to reduce size and weight and have some people who really know MEMS / 2D materials.
Bigelow laid off all it's staff when Coronavirus hit, just like all the casinos in the area. I get the sense they made some advancements in 2D materials, specifically with programmable substrates that can alter surface characteristics, and would like to get started again. And that's why we're hearing about this in the news, the description of the metal is too close to near-term technical advances to not ask "why are we hearing about this now?"
Encourage everyone to ask questions and consider the motivation of the people involved, especially when it comes to a politician or government official admitting something. The only incentives that exist in government are to do nothing and keep people who would make you work from advancing in their careers.
On the difficulty / danger of space travel, it comes back to a statement, that I cannot remember where I first heard it; any technological, architectural or cultural endeavour only represents a tiny fraction of the capacity of the civilisation that did it, because it’s basically impossible to harness all of the resources of a civilisation to a single goal. Even if you assume some sort of hive mind, a vast amount of the capacity of the group will be going into just sustaining the group. The consequence is that if we encounter an interstellar traveller, interstellar travel is going to be a relatively straight forward technology for that civilisation.
Right now, so far as we know, we can’t exceed the speed of light. Yet, not so long ago, the idea of powered flight, let alone Rockets to the Moon were fanciful.
We can also largely only base our understanding of life to what’s on our planet - because thats a shared cradle.
What we don’t necessarily know, and can’t for certain say, is that other forms of life cannot possibly exist - or what environment might be required.
Are there aliens out there, somewhere? I say yes, absolutely. It seems ludicrous to me to suggest otherwise. Our Galaxy alone is vast, yet isn’t all that big compared to others. The Universe so far as we know is infinite. To suggest we’re the only planet with complex, let alone intelligent life isn’t so much laughable, as utterly terrifying.
After all, let’s say we get to those other planets in Goldilocks Zones. What if despite the correct placement, they’re lifeless and inert? No trees. No gas exchange. No microbial life. That’s a genuinely terrifying thought to my mind. I don’t see how we could even start terraforming such a barren world.
Now, have those life forms ever made contact with us? Much as I’d like to believe they have (SciFi junkie), almost certainly not. There’s simply no need. We’re presumably not interesting enough to actually do a meet and greet - especially when they can simply observe us from a distance and realise what a bunch of lunatics the dominant life form is.
I genuinely fear we’ll never make it off this rock, and humanity is doomed to extinction by its own idiocy.
To quote The Universe Song? We better all pray there’s intelligent life in space, because theres bugger all down here on Earth.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Apologies for the rather dour post. I’m normally really quite optimistic in life. Just....not here.
Right now, so far as we know, we can’t exceed the speed of light. Yet, not so long ago, the idea of powered flight, let alone Rockets to the Moon were fanciful.
Powered flight was never fanciful, because birds, bats and bees could demonstrably do it. We went from the first glider in 1849 to the Wright Brothers in 1902 to Charles Lindberg in 1927 because it was demonstrably possible to fly heavier than air - nature had been doing it forever.
Nature has NOT been showing us FTL. At all. We've theorized all sorts of things but when we run the math we hit things like 'negative energy' or 'infinite energy'. Now, physics is full of weirdness and maybe we'll find a cheat for this sort of thing, but there's a big difference between "Figure out how birds do that flying thing which they obviously do" to "How do we go faster than light, given that everything obviously does not go faster than light." Because right now stuff like infinite energy and negative energy just exist on paper.
Right now, so far as we know, we can’t exceed the speed of light. Yet, not so long ago, the idea of powered flight, let alone Rockets to the Moon were fanciful.
Powered flight was never fanciful, because birds, bats and bees could demonstrably do it. We went from the first glider in 1849 to the Wright Brothers in 1902 to Charles Lindberg in 1927 because it was demonstrably possible to fly heavier than air - nature had been doing it forever.
I don't know about you but most birds I see tend to be a LOT smaller than aircraft. There are also none that are even close to breaking the sound barrier - more than once.
Also don't forget a bird is built for it, their bones and bodies are lighter by far (strip the feathers off and they downsize a lot). A human is super heavy and dense in comparison to a bird. The idea that you could build aircraft capable of carrying hundreds of people at once is almost mythological at certain points in history.
This is the thing, technology often has gatekeeper elements that make certain ideas impossible to laughable at various stages in history. Unless you make the breakthrough (often several) that unlocks a new understanding, materials, methods, concepts. Then fanciful dreams become reality
Seriously go back 100 years and tell people that you could have a machine in your hand which can store a library worth of books and access the world's known recorded knowledge and call people in real time in Australia and they'd consider it the work of science fiction at best. IT's so far beyond their comprehension to imagine such a device and it breaches so many "laws" and sciences that they understand. Yet today we consider it so commonplace that its actually abnormal to not have a mobile phone or at least access to one.
If FTL is possible than the Fermi Paradox just becomes even worse. It becomes even more ridiculous that aliens are nowhere to be seen if interstellar travel is trivial.
Interdimensional travel is pretty much the only made up tech that would allow alien civilizations to expand and not be detectable.
lord_blackfang wrote: If FTL is possible than the Fermi Paradox just becomes even worse. It becomes even more ridiculous that aliens are nowhere to be seen if interstellar travel is trivial.
Interdimensional travel is pretty much the only made up tech that would allow alien civilizations to expand and not be detectable.
I would guess that it’s probably not trivial, at least within our current understanding and technology.
But if we look at the size of the solar system alone, space is big. Really big, and really empty.
And if there were aliens that far surpassed us and have made interstellar travel easier, would we even be able to detect them?
And if they were more advanced than us, why would they want to interfere with us and our evolution?
I don’t think they would.
If we only make a comparison to our modern culture alone, it’s a strict policy among anthropologists that if a tribe has not been contacted by modern society, that we refrain from doing-so. This is to ensure their culture and society remains intact.
I think we as humans have learned the hard lesson about hijacking other cultures and colonization.
If any sort of advanced alien culture happened across our planet, we can probably safely assume that we wouldn’t detect them, and they would not likely interfere.
However, in some of the ancient myths and the bible, the stories state that those that did interfere with humans were cast out and considered ‘fallen’. It could be an allegory disguising the truth about alien gods. Or you it could be just another advanced civilization in the distant past and it’s equivalent of anthropologists messing with the native, Stone Age cultures.
Like I said before though, the more likely possibility is there was some ancient culture that colonized a huge chunk of the planet before falling into ruin, destroying themselves, or some sort of cataclysmic event wiped them from the face of the planet.
Aliens are a really big stretch.
I mean modern humans only have social values established within their generation, ones before and after have different, if slightly similar ones. Different countries at the same time can have vastly different social values. The idea that humanity today has a single unified set of values isn't true; nor is it true in the past.
So to suggest that aliens would 100% behave a certain way because of what some of our social values today are, is childish. That's just looking at it purely in imposing human values on aliens; let alone the fact that aliens are, well, aliens, and imparting human characteristics upon them is pointless.
Heck we even have to be careful about doing such to pets and animals on our own world. Whilst we still might share many similarities, its important to realise that their impression and interpretation of the world around them is different to our own. Heck even just what we see and hear differs to them - some cna see colours we cannot; hear things we cannot and vis versa.
Aliens might think of behave in any way and a true alien might have concepts of behaviour that we cannot work out. They might feel emotions (or have a semblance of an emotional system) that we cannot feel; they might have whole rafters of senses that we do not which changes their perception of what's around them.
They might have faster than light travel and have no interest in contacting other life at all. Using it only when needed for resources or the like.
The possibilities are near endless. Heck there might well be species and "life" out there that we'd not even consider alive. Creatures that operate purely in a "drone" like state and yet have achieved much through it; but are not what we'd consider really "alive" as such.
It doesn't matter if they want to be seen or not, unless our understanding of physics is completely wrong - like, to the point that literally everything we can observe only coincidentally conforms to our understanding of physical laws and could just devolve into something completely nonsensical at any moment - then advanced civilizations are detectable with current technology.
I don't know about you but most birds I see tend to be a LOT smaller than aircraft. There are also none that are even close to breaking the sound barrier - more than once.
Also don't forget a bird is built for it, their bones and bodies are lighter by far (strip the feathers off and they downsize a lot). A human is super heavy and dense in comparison to a bird. The idea that you could build aircraft capable of carrying hundreds of people at once is almost mythological at certain points in history.
Birds were, however, proof that heavier than air flight was possible, even if it was only possible for very light creatures.
But we have no FTL phenomena to point to. At best we can point to enormous regions of space expanding in such a way that the expansion is greater than light's ability to cross the gulf (cosmic event horizon) and we've got no idea why it's happening or what's driving it.
That's the difference between humanity achieving heavier than air flight and achieving FTL. One was just figuring out the physics from an observable phenomena, the other is figuring out the physics from NEVER observed phenomena.
Azreal13 wrote: An odd argument to make when we already make aircraft that are barely detectable with modern technology?
Yes, funnily enough it can be easier to detect a dyson in another galaxy than a teacup in Earth orbit.
Ah right, you pivoted from "they haven't been here" to "we couldn't spot them where they are" and I didn't notice. Not hugely consistent but ok.
My bad for being unclear, in this
lord_blackfang wrote: If FTL is possible than the Fermi Paradox just becomes even worse. It becomes even more ridiculous that aliens are nowhere to be seen if interstellar travel is trivial.
Interdimensional travel is pretty much the only made up tech that would allow alien civilizations to expand and not be detectable.
I was already referring to detecting colonies, which should be more numerous with FTL, not UFOs on Earth.
Overread wrote: I mean modern humans only have social values established within their generation, ones before and after have different, if slightly similar ones. Different countries at the same time can have vastly different social values. The idea that humanity today has a single unified set of values isn't true; nor is it true in the past.
So to suggest that aliens would 100% behave a certain way because of what some of our social values today are, is childish. That's just looking at it purely in imposing human values on aliens; let alone the fact that aliens are, well, aliens, and imparting human characteristics upon them is pointless.
Heck we even have to be careful about doing such to pets and animals on our own world. Whilst we still might share many similarities, its important to realise that their impression and interpretation of the world around them is different to our own. Heck even just what we see and hear differs to them - some cna see colours we cannot; hear things we cannot and vis versa.
Aliens might think of behave in any way and a true alien might have concepts of behaviour that we cannot work out. They might feel emotions (or have a semblance of an emotional system) that we cannot feel; they might have whole rafters of senses that we do not which changes their perception of what's around them.
They might have faster than light travel and have no interest in contacting other life at all. Using it only when needed for resources or the like.
The possibilities are near endless. Heck there might well be species and "life" out there that we'd not even consider alive. Creatures that operate purely in a "drone" like state and yet have achieved much through it; but are not what we'd consider really "alive" as such.
Completely agree. I was using that analogy because there are mythic tales and stories that said as much.
Thus, if we assume these ancient gods were indeed aliens, that perhaps they did have some sort of non interference values similar to our own.
Of course that’s an assumption again. But we’re not really dealing with much solid evidence here. So I’m making assumptions and leaps based on what we know already through story and myth and extrapolating that.
I’d also say that quantum entanglement and teleportation are more plausible with what we know than FTL travel.
Blackfang - one problem is you're assuming that alien races would build big things for us to spot. You mention a Dyson Sphere, but we also have to consider that that might be what "we'd" build if we could, but might not be what other alien races could or would build.
They might have no need or desire or even idea of such a structure. They might be totally pacifist and simply explore other worlds in tiny ships leaving little to no trace. So they'd have the technology, but the wouldn't be colonising or building or doing things on other worlds that we might notice.
It could also be that life arose, developed, fell and was rendered to dust generations ago and that what evidence there is is buried in the ground on planets and such. Ergo that it all happened and we missed it. Or rather missed it within our sphere of visual observation.
Or maybe its happening right now, but we don't see it because the light travelling to us is so ancient by the time it reaches us.
Yeah, I'd like to think that any civilisation with the ability to build a Dyson Sphere would have realised long before that point what a horribly ridiculous waste of resources it would be.
Yes, it's a basic assumption that aliens will build megastructures simply because they can. If alien civilizations are common enough, eventually one of them will do it and they should be obvious because of it. It only takes one.
Personally I think aliens would build artificial worlds tailored to their species where they can rather than Dyson Swarms/Spheres, simply because the maintenance requirements are lower (Earth has hosted life for billions of years without outside assistance or sentient maintenance), even if the living space is lower and the up front cost is much, much higher. Such a race could have multiple inhabited worlds around any particular star and never give away their presence on the galactic stage.
But the idea of using up all of a star's available energy to do stuff is an attractive one and a powerful motivator to build Dyson Swarms.
Overread wrote: Blackfang - one problem is you're assuming that alien races would build big things for us to spot. You mention a Dyson Sphere, but we also have to consider that that might be what "we'd" build if we could, but might not be what other alien races could or would build.
They might have no need or desire or even idea of such a structure. They might be totally pacifist and simply explore other worlds in tiny ships leaving little to no trace. So they'd have the technology, but the wouldn't be colonising or building or doing things on other worlds that we might notice.
It could also be that life arose, developed, fell and was rendered to dust generations ago and that what evidence there is is buried in the ground on planets and such. Ergo that it all happened and we missed it. Or rather missed it within our sphere of visual observation.
Or maybe its happening right now, but we don't see it because the light travelling to us is so ancient by the time it reaches us.
There are some assumptions about alien physiology and psychology that are pretty safe bets because of how evolution works. They reproduce. They require sustenance. Ergo they need living space and energy. They can think rationally and so they do things that make sense.
A dyson isn't a literal metal ball. In essence it means that a civilization is capturing a significant portion of a star's emitted energy to do work and this eventually becomes waste heat and the shift in spectrum is easily identifiable and completely unavoidable unless you can dump heat into an alternate universe. It's the easiest known way to get living space and energy. To not see dysons anywhere can only mean two things - that either literally everybody else in our sphere of visual observation figured out something better before even making one, or that nobody is there.
Discussing anything outside our visible universe in both time and space is of course useless, doubly so when talking about alien visits to Earth.
That's a kind of odd way to view it - dysonspheres or nothing. Also surely if its a huge sphere that captures all of a sun's light then, by definition, its going to be pretty darn dark and hard to spot in the first place.
The thing is you also make assumptions like they must reproduce - why? That's how life on 1 planet of a whole universe has developed does not in any way mean that its the only way life can develop.
Plus you're overlooking the fact that they might have reached a point where, if they are similar to us, they could control their genetics down to a very fine level. Removing the need for reproduction and perhaps creating immortal life. Perhaps they have perfected a balanced system of growth within their own ecosystems and don't have need to expand as greedily for resources as humans do. We could be the odd ones out (indeed there's argument that that is one of the big things that does separate us from many other species - our ability and drive to utilize resources to a point where we actively destroy our own resource base through overharvesting)
Overread wrote: That's a kind of odd way to view it - dysonspheres or nothing. Also surely if its a huge sphere that captures all of a sun's light then, by definition, its going to be pretty darn dark and hard to spot in the first place.
insaniak wrote: Yeah, I'd like to think that any civilisation with the ability to build a Dyson Sphere would have realised long before that point what a horribly ridiculous waste of resources it would be.
Any civilization that would have need of that scale of energy probably wouldn't consider it a waste of resources as they would most likely have the ability to move and shape entire planets so globbing a bunch of them together to make a Dyson sphere isn't necessarily out of the question. The real question was already mentioned. Would such aliens be able to come up with the idea? They might never even think of surrounding a star in solar panels.
Its kinda like in Stargate when the Asgard are surprised by the concept of how guns worked. They had never considered using expanding gasses to propel solid projectiles. Its probably a bad example because expanding gasses > moving objects > moving objects at lethal velocity is pretty basic physics, but the general idea of aliens failing to discover certain concepts is definitely something to consider.
Even in our own history, different human civilizations have had an absence of certain concepts. We today can't really fathom not having the concept of Zero, but many civilizations did not have a concept of Zero.
Now a Dyson sphere would be a ludicrously massive project that would take hundreds or thousands of years for even those capable of doing it. So perhaps a simpler thing to expect would be a half-baked dyson sphere. Massive planet sized solar arrays instead of a whole star encompassing array. Just because it would be an easier project.
Even if aliens landed here the general consensus will be to deny that aliens landed here because humanity is far too narcissistic to think that any other life in the universe could be more intelligent than them. "Of course nobody is using interstellar travel because WE can't figure it out. There's no way a blue skinned thing with 5 asses will beat us to the intellectual punch!"
Overread wrote: That's a kind of odd way to view it - dysonspheres or nothing. Also surely if its a huge sphere that captures all of a sun's light then, by definition, its going to be pretty darn dark and hard to spot in the first place.
All the captured light will radiate back out unless they want to boil alive, it'll just be in a different spectrum and if we ever point a telescope at a dyson will will know it instantly.
The thing is you also make assumptions like they must reproduce - why? That's how life on 1 planet of a whole universe has developed does not in any way mean that its the only way life can develop.
Plus you're overlooking the fact that they might have reached a point where, if they are similar to us, they could control their genetics down to a very fine level. Removing the need for reproduction and perhaps creating immortal life. Perhaps they have perfected a balanced system of growth within their own ecosystems and don't have need to expand as greedily for resources as humans do. We could be the odd ones out (indeed there's argument that that is one of the big things that does separate us from many other species - our ability and drive to utilize resources to a point where we actively destroy our own resource base through overharvesting)
Literally every species does that.
The "anything is possible" argument isn't clever, it's ignorant. There are things we know, including some hard limits on physics and biology.
You're also arguing against the exclusivity principle: the problem that, to explain the lack of detectable aliens, the explanation has to apply to literally all aliens. How likely is it that literally all members of all alien civilizations everywhere have decided to deny their basic natures and live as asketic celibate hermits? Because it only takes a handful of individuals who don't do that to quickly outnumber the hippies into irrelevancy.
Overread wrote: That's a kind of odd way to view it - dysonspheres or nothing. Also surely if its a huge sphere that captures all of a sun's light then, by definition, its going to be pretty darn dark and hard to spot in the first place.
It'll be very bright in the infrared spectrum.
only if the Aliens are dump enough and waste that energy
a working Dyson Sphere would be impossible to detect from Earth unless it is very near and circles around another star
or we can see the Aliens building it and a star disappearing over time
and by assuming that evolution takes similar amount of time in different places, if Aliens are outside a 100-1000 lightyear range, we will never see them at all
not even talking about the the universe we can see is a very small part anyway
But we have no FTL phenomena to point to. At best we can point to enormous regions of space expanding in such a way that the expansion is greater than light's ability to cross the gulf (cosmic event horizon) and we've got no idea why it's happening or what's driving it.
That's the difference between humanity achieving heavier than air flight and achieving FTL. One was just figuring out the physics from an observable phenomena, the other is figuring out the physics from NEVER observed phenomena.
well, FTL as Faster Than Light is an observed phenomena, it is just impossible to exceed c (as universal physical constant)
yet it is also impossible for humans to exceed a specific speed, which we can get around by sitting in an object that can travel faster
but for traveling between stars we are not aiming on high speed or go faster than c but search for something that let us travel without moving, were we already have several concepts, we are just missing the necessary energy to do it
Can doesn't mean will. Human rational thinking is very easily bulldozed by other natural elements of our brain, like pattern-finding and tendency to care about immediate results and their own small "clan"..and then you have ideologies, which completely override rational thinking and can do so on a population level.
Overread wrote: That's a kind of odd way to view it - dysonspheres or nothing. Also surely if its a huge sphere that captures all of a sun's light then, by definition, its going to be pretty darn dark and hard to spot in the first place.
It'll be very bright in the infrared spectrum.
only if the Aliens are dump enough and waste that energy
a working Dyson Sphere would be impossible to detect from Earth unless it is very near and circles around another star
Captured light doesn't disappear. All energy ends up as heat in the end no matter what happens in between. A dyson is dark but hot and the skewed ratio of visible vs infrared is so easily identifiable astronomers are confident we that we will notice a dyson if it's the field of vision of any radio telescope if as little as 1% of the star's light is captured by solar panels.
the light does not disappear but is transformed to energy
the point of the sphere is to capture all the energy and use it for something
if the sphere gets hot enough on the outside to be detactable by someone lightyears away, there is a lot of energy wasted and building the sphere makes no sense in the first place
and this is why this idea is to dedect aliens because of super structures is problematic
if someone needs to build a structure to catch the energy from a star, only catching and using a fraction of it instead of "all" is a waste of ressources
but if they use all the energy they can get, we won't be able to see it
How many planets worth of matter would it take to construct a Dyson sphere anyways? The material requirements would be ludicrous. And why make one in the first place instead of using fusion generators and cutting out the middle man?
And has anyone checked the population growth of first world countries lately?
the more "realistic" versions are to have many small solar power plants in orbit around the sun either as ring
but those we won't see either as they will change the light of the star only in one direction and it would be pure luck if this would be the one we are looking at
the idea of Dysen that a high developed alien race could be dedected by the difference of visible light and infrared light from the star because they would collect the visible part for energy, was just that, an idea during the 60ies based on SciFi from the 30ies to overcome the limitation of the time
kodos wrote: the light does not disappear but is transformed to energy
the point of the sphere is to capture all the energy and use it for something
Yes, it is, but eventually you end up with waste heat. And you can extract energy from heat, but you need a colder medium to do so (that's how a Sterling Engine works). So at some point your ability to extract energy from heat fails because your inside and outside temperatures reach equilibrium. And that point will be well above the background heat level, because you're dumping heat into your surroundings.
Basically it's inescapable that at some point you'll be radiating heat (IR light) well above the background temperature of the universe, and your Dyson Sphere/Matryoshka Brain sticks out like a sore thumb.
That assumes a closed unit, you could be shipping in ice or something else from outside of the sphere to provide cooling. Indeed if you've built something that huge you've surely found ways to mitigate and "hide" yourself so that you're not targeted by any passing alien invasion force.
But it doesn't get around the fact that building such a vast structure is quite insane to start with.
NinthMusketeer wrote: How many planets worth of matter would it take to construct a Dyson sphere anyways? The material requirements would be ludicrous. And why make one in the first place instead of using fusion generators and cutting out the middle man?
And has anyone checked the population growth of first world countries lately?
First, you can lift mass out of your own star if you need it. This involves solar panels generating magnetic fields to direct jets of solar wind to giant magnetic collectors. Only a tiny fraction of the stuff is other than hydrogen, but you can still get all the mass you need, because stars are really, really massive.
Second, you do it because solar panels are easier than fusion engines. Like, way, way, way, way easier. The mass to energy extraction is PROBABLY far better as well, unless very small fusion generators are possible. We've yet to figure it out, but solar may provide more energy per unit mass, be easier to produce and maintain, with fewer risks.
Third, yes, first world countries have negative growth rates, but we sort of have to assume that societies with positive growth rates will overtake those with negative growth rates in the long term.
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Overread wrote: That assumes a closed unit, you could be shipping in ice or something else from outside of the sphere to provide cooling. Indeed if you've built something that huge you've surely found ways to mitigate and "hide" yourself so that you're not targeted by any passing alien invasion force.
But it doesn't get around the fact that building such a vast structure is quite insane to start with.
Note that the 'equalibrium' temperature we're talking about might be a few degrees above background levels - 3 degrees Kelvin on average. Something 6 degrees Kelvin will still stand out as obvious, and you're not shipping in 2 degree Kelvin ice.
One thing you could theoretically do is dump the waste IR radiation into artificial black holes which you then use as batteries well away from your home base, but gathering all your waste heat for that is rather unlikely. It's a lot harder than just radiating waste heat, and if you have a Dyson Sphere/Swarm, you probably aren't afraid of invasion because you'd have billions of starships and near infinite power for weaponry to fend off attacks - at least compared to an invading fleet of aliens not using a Dyson Sphere of their own.
kodos wrote: the light does not disappear but is transformed to energy
the point of the sphere is to capture all the energy and use it for something
Yes, it is, but eventually you end up with waste heat. And you can extract energy from heat, but you need a colder medium to do so (that's how a Sterling Engine works). So at some point your ability to extract energy from heat fails because your inside and outside temperatures reach equilibrium. And that point will be well above the background heat level, because you're dumping heat into your surroundings.
Basically it's inescapable that at some point you'll be radiating heat (IR light) well above the background temperature of the universe, and your Dyson Sphere/Matryoshka Brain sticks out like a sore thumb.
this assumes that the energy is only used inside the sphere and not used to cellect it to be used somwhere else
the whole point of the idea is that there is different energy in different spectrums which would mean that an alien race collects part of it to be used for something else inside
yet if the sphere is collecting the energy to be used for something outside the sphere, being simple here, like charging up batteries for starships, we won't see it
also the concept of "waste heat" is for our kind of technology if they use something else and their "waste" is not heat but other radiation, we won't see it either
One thing you could theoretically do is dump the waste IR radiation into artificial black holes which you then use as batteries well away from your home base, but gathering all your waste heat for that is rather unlikely. It's a lot harder than just radiating waste heat, and if you have a Dyson Sphere/Swarm, you probably aren't afraid of invasion because you'd have billions of starships and near infinite power for weaponry to fend off attacks - at least compared to an invading fleet of aliens not using a Dyson Sphere of their own.
And thus we reach the oft forgotten tales of BATTLE PLANETS - who I will note in the UK never quite got the TV exposure they should have but darn if they didn't have some neat and fine toys for them for a while.
this assumes that the energy is only used inside the sphere and not used to cellect it to be used somwhere else
Even redirecting the energy will create waste heat that must be dealt with. If aliens can either reverse entropy or have 100% efficient systems, then they don't need Dyson Swarms to collect energy.
Basically your argument is "We don't see alien megastructures because they violate all our known laws of physics". This seems unlikely, given that such megastructures can be built under known physics (Dyson Swarms at least). IOW an alien race only need be slightly more advanced than us to create one, and aliens reaching technological levels we understand seems a lot more likely than them reaching ones we don't.
lord_blackfang wrote: If FTL is possible than the Fermi Paradox just becomes even worse. It becomes even more ridiculous that aliens are nowhere to be seen if interstellar travel is trivial.
Interdimensional travel is pretty much the only made up tech that would allow alien civilizations to expand and not be detectable.
A while ago, a number of UFOlogists speculated that the “aliens” were coming from parallel universes, much like the three-toed apes and other weird phenomena. Author Jerome Clark called this theory the “Goblin Universe” theory. I’m not sure how seriously the mainstream UFO believers took the theory, but it’s at least out there.
Maybe they take the energy from the Dyson Sphere and convert it into chemical energy to power ships.
Thus the energy will be transported away from the sphere before ultimately being used.
It's a bit foolish to say that absolutely, 100%, all the energy is used and expelled at the Sphere itself.
In human society almost none of the energy we produce is used at the point of production, especially not large scale production.
Even redirecting the energy will create waste heat that must be dealt with. If aliens can either reverse entropy or have 100% efficient systems, then they don't need Dyson Swarms to collect energy.
Basically your argument is "We don't see alien megastructures because they violate all our known laws of physics".
no, the argument is, for something like a megastructure to collect energy make sense, the aliens would need technology to reverse entropy or have 100% efficient systems
and/or use transport the energy away before it gets used/converted
an alien race that has technology similar to ours, just a little bit more advanced, would have no reason to waste ressources to build something that gives back a tiny bit of the energy needed to build and maintain it
and yes, assuming that aliens create technology that we understand is the first mistake
Overread wrote: But it doesn't get around the fact that building such a vast structure is quite insane to start with.
There's this notion that a dyson is some gigantic all or nothing project that you have to build for a million years before you get use from it but it's not, the first solar panel or mirror satellite you put up there is already a functional unit and will help fund the next one and it just snowballs from there. Covering an easily-detectible-to-any-casual-observer 1% of Sol is something we could do in maybe a century, which might be sooner than we have fusion.
Overread wrote: That assumes a closed unit, you could be shipping in ice or something else from outside of the sphere to provide cooling. Indeed if you've built something that huge you've surely found ways to mitigate and "hide" yourself so that you're not targeted by any passing alien invasion force.
But it doesn't get around the fact that building such a vast structure is quite insane to start with.
This kinda always confuses me when Dyson spheres are discussed. Someone brings up something along the lines of the builders wanting to 'hide' from the rest of the galaxy. I think any race which builds a Dyson sphere would have no need to hide from anything. You're already ludicrously powerful. At least you can use some of that captured energy to defend yourself.
Dyson spheres wouldn't be something you build if you are trying to hide. If hiding is a concern, you'd bury yourself in a nebula somewhere not put a freaking STAR in a cage. Especially since the "stealth" of the Dyson sphere would only exist in bubble around the Sphere itself, a bubble which would expand at the speed of light, but anybody outside that bubble could still see the star before you had closed it off, and if they are looking when the star goes dark that is something that might catch their attention.
I would expect a Dyson sphere creating civilization would be an interstellar power, not a single system species trying to hide in a galaxy of terrors.
lord_blackfang wrote: You probably don't spend thousands of years to travel to a different planet just so you can do butt stuff on local drunkards.
Wild speculation theory,
What if, the aliens who come to earth and probe the local drunkards are the space version of the local boys who go cow tipping and there's nothing nefarious about it? It's just a bunch off dumbass kids, drunk of space beer, fresh off from space drivers ed, bored out of their minds in a hodunk nebula where nothing happens and they have nothing to look forward to but following Ghlock and Schleel into the minnes, having a laugh at those goof aliens on the blue planet
If you read the Stephen King book The Dome (ignore the awful TV series) - spoiler below for anyone that wants to read the book..
Spoiler:
That's kind of implied as an explanation for what has caused it, although not explicitly. It's likened to a glass being put down on an ant colony, and faces peering into the inside to watch what is going on. Although you don't get any other sense of who or what they are
It's an interesting idea certainly! Some future technology point creates space-folding, worm holes or something similar that reduces the vast interstellar distances or at least makes them surmountable. Some kind of legal code (like a Star Trek 'Prime Directive'?) prevents general interference, but a small number of smugglers/kids/space hippies(?!) want to go and play in the backyard, or to bring back souvenirs to sell on to collectors.
Overread wrote: That assumes a closed unit, you could be shipping in ice or something else from outside of the sphere to provide cooling. Indeed if you've built something that huge you've surely found ways to mitigate and "hide" yourself so that you're not targeted by any passing alien invasion force.
But it doesn't get around the fact that building such a vast structure is quite insane to start with.
This kinda always confuses me when Dyson spheres are discussed. Someone brings up something along the lines of the builders wanting to 'hide' from the rest of the galaxy. I think any race which builds a Dyson sphere would have no need to hide from anything. You're already ludicrously powerful. At least you can use some of that captured energy to defend yourself.
Dyson spheres wouldn't be something you build if you are trying to hide. If hiding is a concern, you'd bury yourself in a nebula somewhere not put a freaking STAR in a cage. Especially since the "stealth" of the Dyson sphere would only exist in bubble around the Sphere itself, a bubble which would expand at the speed of light, but anybody outside that bubble could still see the star before you had closed it off, and if they are looking when the star goes dark that is something that might catch their attention.
I would expect a Dyson sphere creating civilization would be an interstellar power, not a single system species trying to hide in a galaxy of terrors.
Yes.. or considering the age and vastness of Space, to leave a monument saying "look, we were once here, we were great and we did this"
and yes, assuming that aliens create technology that we understand is the first mistake
No it isn't. All our research points to physical laws and constants that are _extremely_ rigid, and only really 'bend' under the influence of other laws and constants. Various forms of energy (waves, particles, etc) and forms of matter behave in predictable ways and under reproduceable conditions. Really unfamiliar user layouts (and software) would require research and potentially a lot of hands-on experience, but energy sources and effects on physical objects would be very testable and understandable.
well, our main source of energy is to boil water and use the expansion of the gas to move something
even the most efficient solar power plants are used that way (to heat up a liquid and power a turbine)
while we understand how most things work, we still don't know how to use it
and assuming that other also don't know and just use heat up liquids to power a turbine with 60-80% loss of energy to generate electricity (or that they use electricity at all) at the same time they should be able to travel thru space is naive at best
Actually I can see a point in even our own technology where we will exceed our practical limitations.
Which isn't to say we wouldn't be able to comprehend a theory of how something might work, but that the actual knowledge would rely on so much advanced detail in several fields at once that we'd end up with machines where each "part" is understood by one person, but not the others in the team. Building to a point where we could have technologies and machines that rely on machines themselves to comprehend the whole.
At least when you factor in the finite amount of learning time the average human has and their capacity to learn.
Of course we might well see a rise of technologies that allow us to expand our capacity to learn, store and access information which could then not only speed our learning but vastly extend our capacity to process data.
Imagine it you could just download kung fu on a whim
lord_blackfang wrote: Whatever tech aliens have will work within physical laws. There's no plausible reason we couldn't understand it.
We can't explain where most of the universe is, cannot explain what electricity is, precisely how gravity works and great swathes of stuff connected to black holes, just for starters.
On a cosmic level we are a dumb species and making assumptions about how much we'd understand of a society that might have millennia of advancement on us is just nuts.
You're definitely moving the goalpost there but we already live in a time where we discover new forms of matter and energy that are beyond our natural senses because math says they have to be there.
I don't really see how, in response to an assertion that we'd understand something constructed by a more advanced society, pointing out a few of the long list of "known unknowns" we're aware of, let alone the many thing we're yet to discover we have no idea about, is moving the goalposts?
lord_blackfang wrote: Whatever tech aliens have will work within physical laws. There's no plausible reason we couldn't understand it.
Didn't a wise man once say that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic?
For all our scientific progress to get to our current state of understanding very little about the universe around us, there is absolutely no reason to expect that we would have the slightest chance of understanding the technology of an alien race even a century or two ahead of us.
NinthMusketeer wrote: A Dyson sphere as a monument? Around a star that will eventually destroy itself and likely the sphere along with it?
Not all stars go nova.
Can you elaborate? I'm missing the connection between what I said and your comment. Are you expressing agreement?
Stars don't necessarily destroy themselves. Or at least not in a way that would destroy the surrounding material. Small stars like ours become red giants, then white dwarfs, then brown dwarfs as they cool down. This would leave a Dyson Swarm around it intact if it was built at the appropriate distance, and this process would take a long, long, long time. Nothing's forever, but if you wanted to leave a monument to your existence that other starfaring races could find, there are stars that will last long enough for this purpose.
If you really want a long-haul monument, you park it on an Iron Star (yes, on it, as Iron Stars are basically inert stellar cores of iron), and it'll last until some alien species decides to use the iron to feed their black hole farms long after the stellar formation period of the universe.
Or you instead build a Penrose sphere, basically a Dyson Sphere but around a Black Hole instead. Black Holes are going to last a heck of a lot longer than stars. Yes, technically they are different things, but close enough for comparison sake.
NinthMusketeer wrote: A Dyson sphere as a monument? Around a star that will eventually destroy itself and likely the sphere along with it?
Not all stars go nova.
Can you elaborate? I'm missing the connection between what I said and your comment. Are you expressing agreement?
Stars don't necessarily destroy themselves. Or at least not in a way that would destroy the surrounding material. Small stars like ours become red giants, then white dwarfs, then brown dwarfs as they cool down. This would leave a Dyson Swarm around it intact if it was built at the appropriate distance, and this process would take a long, long, long time. Nothing's forever, but if you wanted to leave a monument to your existence that other starfaring races could find, there are stars that will last long enough for this purpose.
If you really want a long-haul monument, you park it on an Iron Star (yes, on it, as Iron Stars are basically inert stellar cores of iron), and it'll last until some alien species decides to use the iron to feed their black hole farms long after the stellar formation period of the universe.
Well I said the dyson sphere was likely to be destroyed, not guaranteed. Going up to red giant status would certainly do it, unless the sphere was built outside venus' orbit. And the point is all stars die, one way or another.
And we're still completely ignoring how much material it would take to build such a sphere. Having a whole sector cleared out of solid planets would probably be more visible than the sphere itself.
Only if someone bothered to actually survey each and every system so they could go "Hey, why are there no planets in this area?", in which case they probably already found the dyson sphere just through stumbling upon it.
You can only detect planets around a distant star if their orbit happens to come between the observer and the star at the moment they are observing it, and the planet is of a certain size. So not detecting planets around a distant star is perfectly normal. Heck, we don't even know how common planets actually are outside of our own solar system.
Haha.. imagine if the grandest achievement and parting shot of the human species was a giant McDonald arches or Amazon arrow logo. Other sentient species puzzling over what it could possibly mean for the next billion years.
I liked the Peter F Hamilton idea in his Judas Unchained novel; the sphere is there not to protect or preserve something, but to keep something inside!
