Do You Believe in Extraterrestrials/UFOs?

Just curious to see what the average WSO monkey thinks.

Came across this video a couple months ago and have been curious about its authenticity ever since:

So, believe in Aliens? Ever seen a UFO? Think abductions actually occur?

thanks

 

I saw a distinct UFO once. Not like some blurry shit that might have been a UFO. This was an alien craft. Haven't told anyone in real life. Hovered over a field for like 20 seconds and zoomed off.

 

Honestly, I would not be surprised. I have not studied the topic much, but I am not convinced we are the sole intelligent life in existence. I don't know that I buy into a wholesale coverup with collusion between governments across the world for decades. However, I would not be surprised if government(s) chose to withhold this information from the public. People frighten easily, and the average citizen is a sheep who needs to be told how to live. Disclosing extraterrestrial contact would incite mass panic across the globe.

I am permanently behind on PMs, it's not personal.
 
APAE:

Honestly, I would not be surprised. I have not studied the topic much, but I am not convinced we are the sole intelligent life in existence. I don't know that I buy into a wholesale coverup with collusion between governments across the world for decades. However, I would not be surprised if government(s) chose to withhold this information from the public. People frighten easily, and the average citizen is a sheep who needs to be told how to live. Disclosing extraterrestrial contact would incite mass panic across the globe.

Honestly, we have absolutely no reason to believe that the American government is remotely competent enough to keep a secret like extraterrestrial visitation. I'm agnostic on alien intelligent life but I'm 110% certain that there is not a bureaucracy on planet Earth that could keep that secret for 70 years.

 

Exactly. Reminds me of a South Park where the government created the conspiracy that they carried out 9/11, just so people thought that they had the power to do it.

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for freedom of thought which they seldom use.
 

I'm not sure. I'm 50-50 on the topic. I'd say I'm an open minded skeptic. On the one hand the universe is incomprehensibly massive with countless stars and no doubt many, many Earth-like planets and solar systems similar to ours. On the other hand the cocktail for life is incredibly difficult to duplicate. Even if simple life were abundant (which we really don't know at this point), complex life requires complex, improbable processes to form. And even if these amazing processes combined to create complex life (cells and then animals) the evolution from animal to an intelligent being that can look to the stars and be cognizant of its own existence is likely infinitesimal. If you think about the outrageously improbable nature of humanity's existence (i.e. we don't even exist without a global killer asteroid 66 million years ago) it's easy to see why people could believe that mankind is alone in the universe.

I think what you have is two mathematical probabilities slamming into each other--the strong probability of an extremely large number of solar systems or galaxies that are similar to ours that no doubt hold innumerable planets that could potentially be similar to Earth battling with the extraordinarily small probability that the universe would randomly generate life, let alone complex and self aware life.

I would say that if there's intelligent life out there then it is incredibly rare, and locating it would be like locating a needle in a haystack the size of North America.

 

Absolutely, the odds are high that there is other complex life out there. I also believe that we will never come in physical contact with them. The universe is just too big. Even the nearest star is almost unimaginably far away.

I definitely don't think aliens are walking around planet Earth giving hillbillies anal probes.

 
DickFuld:

I definitely don't think aliens are walking around planet Earth giving hillbillies anal probes.

Yeah, it seems logical to me that if aliens wanted to keep their secrecy they'd be in remote parts of the world abducting tribesmen or other poor, illiterate people who have minimal access to communication devices. Not people in Utah who can go on TV, the internet, or to newspapers.

 

I disagree with your assertion that we will never come in contact with intelligent life, if in fact it does exist outside of Earth. Look at how much technology has advanced in the last hundred years. Is it that crazy to believe that if we survive as a species for the next 5000 years that we will have technology for intergalactic travel at some point? I don't believe so.

 
machineman13:

I disagree with your assertion that we will never come in contact with intelligent life, if in fact it does exist outside of Earth. Look at how much technology has advanced in the last hundred years. Is it that crazy to believe that if we survive as a species for the next 5000 years that we will have technology for intergalactic travel at some point? I don't believe so.

Intergalactic travel is like having an interstate highway system on Earth without cars or horses and with a world population of 5 people spread out throughout the world without anyone knowing that anyone else exists. It's definitely conceivable that those 5 people (if they existed perpetually) would never run into each other.

 

Just because technology has expanded at exponential rates for the past hundred years does not mean it will indefinitely. Even if it did, we (the human race) will likely first: A) run out of resources B) kill each other.

In fact, I think that the more science has evolved and expanded, the more we know about how little we know. Recently read about quantum wormholes and that may be a viable avenue of travel? http://news.sciencemag.org/physics/2013/12/link-between-wormholes-and-q…

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for freedom of thought which they seldom use.
 
Best Response

What's your definition of mastering intergalactic travel, though? Are you talking about travel from our Milky Way Galaxy to the next nearest galaxy, or travel from any random galaxy to another on a whim? There's a big difference between the two. The universe is kind of a big place.

That image contains 5,500 galaxies and is a composite of over 2,000 images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope of a small stretch of space in the constellation Fornax.

I think the sheer size of the universe is too big to really harness with human technology, even a couple millennia from now. I can certainly see humanity expanding out into the Solar System and even out into the Milky Way Galaxy, but beyond that, I'm not so sure. When it requires the ability to travel many times the speed of light just to arrive at your destination within your lifetime (and we're talking hundreds of millions of times the speed of light), I don't think humanity can do it before we nuke ourselves to hell over some territorial dispute.

 

My definition is traveling the speed of light or faster. NASA right now is working on a concept engine that would bend space and allow us to travel at ANY speed we choose--10 times the speed of light, 100 times, 1000 times. There's no limit. It's just a concept right now, but I would imagine artificial intelligence will probably master the engine design in a few hundred years. Humans will probably not master the design by themselves.

Once mankind masters nuclear fusion then the sky's the limit on many space and terrestrial technologies.

 

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