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 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Ketara wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
And these aren't trivial things we're talking about, our modern understanding of physics can't be that badly wrong because so many observations have been made to confirm it and so much engineering work has been done based on it without failing to work.

Modern science doesn't necessarily have to be wrong for some alien species to be ignoring the laws of physics as we comprehend them. That is to say, we may have empirically tested the existence of certain rules; but that doesn't rule out some undiscovered method of suspending or countering those rules. For example, we can detect gravity from a coin being thrown and falling to the ground, but can currently overrule gravity by exerting a stronger force (magnetism), or alter its effects by messing around in vaccuum chambers and suchlike.

It could well be that there are methods of bypassing the rules around the speed of light and suchlike that we're simply unaware of. It is well and good to say that something is impossible with our current understanding of affairs; but it should always be acknowledged that that understanding is really quite incomplete.

There is no getting around the fact that the speed of light is the absolute speed limit of the universe. It doesn't matter how technologically advanced you are, Maxwell's equations don't care, special relativity doesn't care, general relativity doesn't care.

All of these have been found to be accurate in every test, even around the most extreme phenomena in the whole universe, black holes.

Aye. Every test.....that we're familiar with and have thought of and been able to test. It may well be that there are ways of manipulating or bypassing the speed of light that aren't yet evident.

Empiricism is both the strength and hard restriction of scientific method. Look into Thomas Kuhn's paradigm shifts, you'll see what I mean.

There is always a possibility that there's something everybody missed, or that everything we've seen is only a special case of a larger theory, a larger theory that would offer the possibility than FLT travel.

But at the end of the day, a guy sees a shiny spot in the sky, doesn't know what it is, and for some reason the most obvious answer to him is one that contradicts everything we know and measure.
I could say that all the UFOs are actually little fairies that emit light when they mischievously fly in the sky. I have as much proof of it as people who say that UFOs are alien coming from places thousands of light years away, but at least my hypothesis doesn't break any know theory, so it's actually more likely.

Except that people claim to have encounters with aliens and their crafts to this day while no one encounters fairies any more. Whether or not you believe those people, they still provide far more context for one explanation than another, even if the simplest (and most widely believed) explanations have nothing to do with aliens or fairies.


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And that's not mentioning the notion that aliens need not be using FTL to visit us, or the theories that they are coming from parallel universes or even up/downtime.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Except that people claim to have encounters with aliens and their crafts to this day while no one encounters fairies any more. Whether or not you believe those people, they still provide far more context for one explanation than another, even if the simplest (and most widely believed) explanations have nothing to do with aliens or fairies.


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And that's not mentioning the notion that aliens need not be using FTL to visit us, or the theories that they are coming from parallel universes or even up/downtime.

It may be more a question of it not being reported in the circles you frequent- fairy sightings don't generally have enough credibility to make the news. Looks like someone recently compiled reported accounts in the British Isles- https://www.cornwalllive.com/news/cornwall-news/cornwall-named-fairy-hotbed-new-898715 .

Fairies are one of those niche conspiracy theories like bigfoot, but with a spiritual overtone.

https://aliisaacstoryteller.com/2016/08/22/the-curious-phenomenon-of-the-irish-fairy-tree/

Generally they're left in the realm of fantasy and ghost stories but unlike most bigfoot, alien or loch ness monster sightings, it seems most of those who see fairies tend to not even try to seek publicity- just telling the story to friends and interested acquaintances.

How do we explain the UFOs encounter with militaries airforces, I mean, sometimes they even shooted at them (at least 1). Do you think the pilots and radars got it wrong ?
But then how do we explain that UFOs come on Earth, and...basically do nothing but probe cows ?

 godardc wrote:
How do we explain the UFOs encounter with militaries airforces, I mean, sometimes they even shooted at them (at least 1). Do you think the pilots and radars got it wrong ?
But then how do we explain that UFOs come on Earth, and...basically do nothing but probe cows ?

We don't explain them. We can't. That is why they are unidentified objects. The pilots and radars probably are not wrong. They actually encountered an unidentified phenomenon. But saying those must come from outer space is just a crazy conclusion. It violates the scientific method. Just because we do not know what these phenomena are, doesn't mean they come from outer space or are aliens. We should always test the most simple hypothesis first. If there is no need to insert aliens into it, then don't. For all we know it could just be an as of yet not understood natural phenomenon.
And that is the problem with mythical/legendary stuff like aliens, Bigfoot, Nessie and ghosts. People jump to fantastic conclusions without considering more mundane, boring explanations. I am not sure if these things qualify as conspiracy theories though. Where is the conspiracy?

But... I am not saying it is aliens, but if it is aliens then I am sure that cows must be exactly the reason they come to Earth. Their culture is probably completely different from ours. Maybe the cow is some kind of amazing, extraordinary creature in their culture. Or maybe they can see things in cows or interact with cows in ways that we can't. Or maybe they just like milk as well

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 godardc wrote:
How do we explain the UFOs encounter with militaries airforces, I mean, sometimes they even shooted at them (at least 1). Do you think the pilots and radars got it wrong ?
But then how do we explain that UFOs come on Earth, and...basically do nothing but probe cows ?

We don't explain them. We can't. That is why they are unidentified objects. The pilots and radars probably are not wrong. They actually encountered an unidentified phenomenon. But saying those must come from outer space is just a crazy conclusion. It violates the scientific method. Just because we do not know what these phenomena are, doesn't mean they come from outer space or are aliens. We should always test the most simple hypothesis first. If there is no need to insert aliens into it, then don't. For all we know it could just be an as of yet not understood natural phenomenon.
And that is the problem with mythical/legendary stuff like aliens, Bigfoot, Nessie and ghosts. People jump to fantastic conclusions without considering more mundane, boring explanations. I am not sure if these things qualify as conspiracy theories though. Where is the conspiracy?

But... I am not saying it is aliens, but if it is aliens then I am sure that cows must be exactly the reason they come to Earth. Their culture is probably completely different from ours. Maybe the cow is some kind of amazing, extraordinary creature in their culture. Or maybe they can see things in cows or interact with cows in ways that we can't. Or maybe they just like milk as well

Indeed, people tend to jump to crazy conclusions as soon as they don't understand something rather than just admiting that they don't know !

That’s no way to talk about economists!

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Ketara wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
And these aren't trivial things we're talking about, our modern understanding of physics can't be that badly wrong because so many observations have been made to confirm it and so much engineering work has been done based on it without failing to work.

Modern science doesn't necessarily have to be wrong for some alien species to be ignoring the laws of physics as we comprehend them. That is to say, we may have empirically tested the existence of certain rules; but that doesn't rule out some undiscovered method of suspending or countering those rules. For example, we can detect gravity from a coin being thrown and falling to the ground, but can currently overrule gravity by exerting a stronger force (magnetism), or alter its effects by messing around in vaccuum chambers and suchlike.

It could well be that there are methods of bypassing the rules around the speed of light and suchlike that we're simply unaware of. It is well and good to say that something is impossible with our current understanding of affairs; but it should always be acknowledged that that understanding is really quite incomplete.

There is no getting around the fact that the speed of light is the absolute speed limit of the universe. It doesn't matter how technologically advanced you are, Maxwell's equations don't care, special relativity doesn't care, general relativity doesn't care.

All of these have been found to be accurate in every test, even around the most extreme phenomena in the whole universe, black holes.

But if the speed of light can be manipulated, then so can the speed limit.

What if you can travel without moving?

Like the Futurama delivery ship?

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:


But if the speed of light can be manipulated, then so can the speed limit.

Well, yes. You can make light travel slower by having it pass through a material with a relative permeability that isn't equal to 1. So the maximum speed for travelling through matter is less than the maximum speed of travelling through a vacuum and will be different for different types of matter.

But none of that helps you try and travel faster than light through any particular medium.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:


But if the speed of light can be manipulated, then so can the speed limit.

Well, yes. You can make light travel slower by having it pass through a material with a relative permeability that isn't equal to 1. So the maximum speed for travelling through matter is less than the maximum speed of travelling through a vacuum and will be different for different types of matter.

But none of that helps you try and travel faster than light through any particular medium.

No, but if you can make light travel faster than it does through a vacuum then you could also travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum.

 Frazzled wrote:


What if you can travel without moving?

That is a meaningless definition under relativity, where it is equally acceptable to say your ship is stationary and the universe is moving around you as it is to say the universe is stationary and your ship is moving around in it.


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 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:


But if the speed of light can be manipulated, then so can the speed limit.

Well, yes. You can make light travel slower by having it pass through a material with a relative permeability that isn't equal to 1. So the maximum speed for travelling through matter is less than the maximum speed of travelling through a vacuum and will be different for different types of matter.

But none of that helps you try and travel faster than light through any particular medium.

No, but if you can make light travel faster than it does through a vacuum then you could also travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum.

Which is impossible. A vacuum has nothing in it, therefore nothing to get in the way of light, therefore nothing to slow it down. You cannot get less than nothing when it comes to an amount of stuff.

Not to mention that if you change that speed limit of light in a vacuum, you change the fundamental equations of electromagnetism. So, you would alter the electric and magnetic fields of everything in the universe.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 godardc wrote:
How do we explain the UFOs encounter with militaries airforces, I mean, sometimes they even shooted at them (at least 1). Do you think the pilots and radars got it wrong ?
But then how do we explain that UFOs come on Earth, and...basically do nothing but probe cows ?

We don't explain them. We can't. That is why they are unidentified objects. The pilots and radars probably are not wrong. They actually encountered an unidentified phenomenon. But saying those must come from outer space is just a crazy conclusion. It violates the scientific method. Just because we do not know what these phenomena are, doesn't mean they come from outer space or are aliens. We should always test the most simple hypothesis first. If there is no need to insert aliens into it, then don't. For all we know it could just be an as of yet not understood natural phenomenon.
And that is the problem with mythical/legendary stuff like aliens, Bigfoot, Nessie and ghosts. People jump to fantastic conclusions without considering more mundane, boring explanations. I am not sure if these things qualify as conspiracy theories though. Where is the conspiracy?

UFOs usually qualify as Conspiracy Theories because of the theories that the truth is being somehow suppressed, either by shadowy government agencies, secret-societies or extra-terrestrials themselves, or a combination of them. Ghosts and Cryptozoology don't fit this pattern since the only alleged conspiracies there are usually that mainstream science just refuses to acknowledge them since they contradict the establishment line.

 Nostromodamus wrote:
Like the Futurama delivery ship?

BSG, Dune, Star Trek, the Milieu series etc. wormholes, holes between places, or shifting outside of 3rd dimensional space.



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 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:


What if you can travel without moving?

That is a meaningless definition under relativity, where it is equally acceptable to say your ship is stationary and the universe is moving around you as it is to say the universe is stationary and your ship is moving around in it.


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 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:


But if the speed of light can be manipulated, then so can the speed limit.

No, you aren't in 3rd dimensional space at all. If walking down the street I come upon the door and step through it. This leads to another door a mile down the road. I've only moved through the door, not walked the mile, thus going faster than my fastest running speed.

Well, yes. You can make light travel slower by having it pass through a material with a relative permeability that isn't equal to 1. So the maximum speed for travelling through matter is less than the maximum speed of travelling through a vacuum and will be different for different types of matter.

But none of that helps you try and travel faster than light through any particular medium.

No, but if you can make light travel faster than it does through a vacuum then you could also travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum.

Which is impossible. A vacuum has nothing in it, therefore nothing to get in the way of light, therefore nothing to slow it down. You cannot get less than nothing when it comes to an amount of stuff.

Not to mention that if you change that speed limit of light in a vacuum, you change the fundamental equations of electromagnetism. So, you would alter the electric and magnetic fields of everything in the universe.

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 simonr1978 wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 godardc wrote:
How do we explain the UFOs encounter with militaries airforces, I mean, sometimes they even shooted at them (at least 1). Do you think the pilots and radars got it wrong ?
But then how do we explain that UFOs come on Earth, and...basically do nothing but probe cows ?

We don't explain them. We can't. That is why they are unidentified objects. The pilots and radars probably are not wrong. They actually encountered an unidentified phenomenon. But saying those must come from outer space is just a crazy conclusion. It violates the scientific method. Just because we do not know what these phenomena are, doesn't mean they come from outer space or are aliens. We should always test the most simple hypothesis first. If there is no need to insert aliens into it, then don't. For all we know it could just be an as of yet not understood natural phenomenon.
And that is the problem with mythical/legendary stuff like aliens, Bigfoot, Nessie and ghosts. People jump to fantastic conclusions without considering more mundane, boring explanations. I am not sure if these things qualify as conspiracy theories though. Where is the conspiracy?

UFOs usually qualify as Conspiracy Theories because of the theories that the truth is being somehow suppressed, either by shadowy government agencies, secret-societies or extra-terrestrials themselves, or a combination of them. Ghosts and Cryptozoology don't fit this pattern since the only alleged conspiracies there are usually that mainstream science just refuses to acknowledge them since they contradict the establishment line.

There are UFOs all the time. Actual aliens is something else entirely. While anything is possible, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

You are correct of course, I fell into the bad habit there of conflating UFO and Alien.

The Truth Is Out There.

The Lies Are All Inside.

The Auld Grump

 TheAuldGrump wrote:
The Lies Are All Inside.

The Auld Grump

Preposterous. I saw some cake, I ate it, and now it's inside- oh dear god.

My opinion of a conspiracy theory comes down to one thing.

Sometimes progress depends on making an 'insane' proposal, and then honestly looking for evidence to prove or disprove it. If you can prove it, it's no longer insane. Take the theory of continental drift, for example. The idea that the surface of the earth moves around continuously was considered completely wacko! And yet, evidence was found to support the theory, and eventually GPS satellite data proved it once and for all.

An insane proposal becomes a conspiracy theory when your evidence to prove it boils down to 'I can't show you proof because there's this huge conspiracy to hide the truth!'

That people still manage to convince themselves that the conspiracy theory is somehow correct despite a complete lack of evidence just convinces me that humanity is, at heart, completely gullible.

The absolute speed limit being the speed of light isn't an issue if they have figured out how to manipulate time. If you can change your experience of time, then taking a million years to get somewhere doesn't matter.

Isn't the main idea behind FTL travel that you might be able to manipulate space rather than time. It doesn't matter how far something is away, if you can manipulate the distance rather than travel it.

 feeder wrote:
The absolute speed limit being the speed of light isn't an issue if they have figured out how to manipulate time. If you can change your experience of time, then taking a million years to get somewhere doesn't matter.

Unless you plan to come back and tell people about what you find...

 d-usa wrote:
Isn't the main idea behind FTL travel that you might be able to manipulate space rather than time. It doesn't matter how far something is away, if you can manipulate the distance rather than travel it.

That's pretty much it in a nutshell. Some people can't get past the speed of light as the hard stop. I'm not old enough to remember when the speed of sound was the unattainable speed, but I've read and watched enough on it to realize that the consensus was wrong the second Chuck Yeager broke that barrier.

feeder wrote:The absolute speed limit being the speed of light isn't an issue if they have figured out how to manipulate time. If you can change your experience of time, then taking a million years to get somewhere doesn't matter.

d-usa wrote:Isn't the main idea behind FTL travel that you might be able to manipulate space rather than time. It doesn't matter how far something is away, if you can manipulate the distance rather than travel it.

Space and time are both relative.
The faster you go, the slower time passes, and the shorter the distances are.
Let's assume there is a planet that is 1,000 light years away from earth (when the distance is measured by someone who is on the surface of the earth), and you want to go there. If you go there in a rocket that goes at a high speed, pretty close to the speed of light, then in that rocket, which moves very fast, the planet doesn't appear to be 1,000 light years anymore, but appears to be closer. And time in your rocket doesn't go as fast as time on the earth.
There is a speed at which this planet would appear to be only 1 light year away, and you would get there in roughly a year (when the time is measured by a clock inside your rocket). Someone who stayed on the earth would however measure your travel time to be of roughly 1,000 LY. And there is no limit to how much you can shorten distances/slow down time (the closer you get to the speed of light, the stronger the effect). You could theoretically get anywhere in the universe in a time as short as you want (again, when the time is measured by you). But as someone pointed out, by the time you come back (which could be infinitely short for you), people on your home planet will be much older. That's actually the famous twin paradox from Langevin.

But there's also a problem with measuring things that are far away, as we effectively see the past. When someone on a planet a million light years away looks at the earth, he sees what the earth was like a million years ago (it's the time the light took to reach him). So if you look at a distant planet, and wait until something specific happens before going there, by the time you reach it a lot of time passed on that planet.
So all the assumptions that Aliens waited until there were people on earth, or until said people reached a certain development, before coming here are actually making an assumption on how far these Aliens can come from. And that's actually not far away, which is very unlikely.


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 Just Tony wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
Isn't the main idea behind FTL travel that you might be able to manipulate space rather than time. It doesn't matter how far something is away, if you can manipulate the distance rather than travel it.

That's pretty much it in a nutshell. Some people can't get past the speed of light as the hard stop. I'm not old enough to remember when the speed of sound was the unattainable speed, but I've read and watched enough on it to realize that the consensus was wrong the second Chuck Yeager broke that barrier.

Breaking the speed of sound (or any other arbitrary speed below the speed of light) is a technological barrier. Breaking the speed of light is a theoretical one, so they're vastly different.
Very few things are as fundamental as the speed of light in Physics. Saying you can break it is like saying you can create energy out of nothing, or decrease entropy. These things are so fundamental that every time someone measured them to be wrong, that person pretty much always assumed that there was something wrong with their measurement (something missing, or just an error), which has always been verified.

 Just Tony wrote:
That's pretty much it in a nutshell. Some people can't get past the speed of light as the hard stop. I'm not old enough to remember when the speed of sound was the unattainable speed, but I've read and watched enough on it to realize that the consensus was wrong the second Chuck Yeager broke that barrier.

They're entirely different things. The speed of sound was a point where a variety of problems presented an engineering challenge. We'd already sent a lot of things at speeds far greater than the speed of sound, like bullets for instance, just never a plane.

Whereas the speed of light isn't an engineering challenge, it is a hard rule of the physical rules controlling our existence. No matter how clever you build your ship, no matter how much energy you can muster to propel it, you will never go past the speed of light. To get around this you don't just need to improve existing tech, you need to invent an entirely new form of travel, a way of moving from one place to another that we don't even have a clear concept of on paper yet.

Whether we one day build that other form of travel I don't know. But I can you that developing it is absolutely nothing at all like getting a plane past the speed of sound.

What I find quite interesting at the moment is that you have literally the biggest fodder for conspiracy theories ever, with an investigation into collusion between aspects of the White House and Russia and the prospect that the country is being influenced/coerced by a foreign power, and the quarters from which the theories usually spring is completely ignoring it.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
On issues such as Flat Earth....

I just wish they'd put more effort into their arguments than 'Bible' and 'NASA CGI, because NASA is an anagram of Satan, and it's run by Jesuits. Or possibly illuminati. Or was it Jews this week? I'll check the log book'.

Basically any conspiracy theory that requires a globe spanning web of political intrigue and not a single mistake being made is clearly going to be bunkum. Look at our respective Governments, folks. Do they look at all competent in any way, shape or form? Regardless of party, do they really, honestly, strike you as being able to manipulate world wide events? Or are they still simply blundering about in the gloom, the way Governments always have?

I think this is probably the biggest counter-argument to any large-scale conspiracy theory. The Nixon government couldn't bug a hotel room without getting busted, they certainly wouldn't have been able to orchestrate hundreds of thousands of people to fake the moon landings, or co-ordinate the actions of Bin Laden to help bring about a mass geo-political expansion into the middle east.

 simonr1978 wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 godardc wrote:
How do we explain the UFOs encounter with militaries airforces, I mean, sometimes they even shooted at them (at least 1). Do you think the pilots and radars got it wrong ?
But then how do we explain that UFOs come on Earth, and...basically do nothing but probe cows ?

We don't explain them. We can't. That is why they are unidentified objects. The pilots and radars probably are not wrong. They actually encountered an unidentified phenomenon. But saying those must come from outer space is just a crazy conclusion. It violates the scientific method. Just because we do not know what these phenomena are, doesn't mean they come from outer space or are aliens. We should always test the most simple hypothesis first. If there is no need to insert aliens into it, then don't. For all we know it could just be an as of yet not understood natural phenomenon.
And that is the problem with mythical/legendary stuff like aliens, Bigfoot, Nessie and ghosts. People jump to fantastic conclusions without considering more mundane, boring explanations. I am not sure if these things qualify as conspiracy theories though. Where is the conspiracy?

UFOs usually qualify as Conspiracy Theories because of the theories that the truth is being somehow suppressed, either by shadowy government agencies, secret-societies or extra-terrestrials themselves, or a combination of them. Ghosts and Cryptozoology don't fit this pattern since the only alleged conspiracies there are usually that mainstream science just refuses to acknowledge them since they contradict the establishment line.

When it comes to Cryptozoology, I think it's more that your Standard or Garden Variety biologist has better things to do in terms of identifying new species than traipse around looking solely for proof of a mythological one.

I mean, if Bigfoot/Yeti/Sasquatch was actually proven to exist, it doesn't undermine conventional animal family trees etc. It'd just be studied, identified and slotted in.

And one only has to look to Australia and Madagascar to see how species can develop into highly unusual forms given sufficient isolation.

 sebster wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:
That's pretty much it in a nutshell. Some people can't get past the speed of light as the hard stop. I'm not old enough to remember when the speed of sound was the unattainable speed, but I've read and watched enough on it to realize that the consensus was wrong the second Chuck Yeager broke that barrier.

They're entirely different things. The speed of sound was a point where a variety of problems presented an engineering challenge. We'd already sent a lot of things at speeds far greater than the speed of sound, like bullets for instance, just never a plane.

Whereas the speed of light isn't an engineering challenge, it is a hard rule of the physical rules controlling our existence. No matter how clever you build your ship, no matter how much energy you can muster to propel it, you will never go past the speed of light. To get around this you don't just need to improve existing tech, you need to invent an entirely new form of travel, a way of moving from one place to another that we don't even have a clear concept of on paper yet.

Whether we one day build that other form of travel I don't know. But I can you that developing it is absolutely nothing at all like getting a plane past the speed of sound.

What I'm saying is that we are in our infancy with understanding the plausibility of photodynamics. Think about magnets for a second. At one time we knew that lodestone stuck to iron. That's it. Now, since we've advanced, not only do we know WHY that happens, we can measure magnetic fields, and even PRODUCE magnetic fields. My argument is that our current understanding of the speed of light and any possibility of exceeding it is as backwater as pre-electricity humans and magnetism. We already have a device that is breaking Newtonian law that NASA is supposed to be testing in zero gravity (blanking on the name of the drive, but it's the one with the weird copper cone...) so we're nowhere NEAR the complete understanding of that part of physics to say "never".

As someone utterly ignorant of the physics behind why we can't exceed the speed of light, I think Just Tony has an interesting point.

There's lots and lots of stuff science has ultimately proved itself wrong on. That's pretty much what science is for.

So whilst I've no reason to believe current physicists are wrong in their assertion, we can't pretend any of us know everything.

I'm not ignorant of our understanding of it. I challenge that we've hit the limit of our understanding of it, AND of all the ways to work around it. All those ways have been mentioned in here already, and I don't need to retread those (wormholes, spacefold, etc.) to prove my point. How long have lasers existed? We've not even mastered THAT technology, or have a COMPLETE understanding of it. We're close, mind you, but not a COMPLETE understanding.