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posted by martyb on Monday July 02 2018, @01:42AM   Printer-friendly
from the Close-Encounters-of-Whatever-Kind dept.

Are we alone? The question is worthy of serious scientific study

Are we alone? Unfortunately, neither of the answers feel satisfactory. To be alone in this vast universe is a lonely prospect. On the other hand, if we are not alone and there is someone or something more powerful out there, that too is terrifying.

As a NASA research scientist and now a professor of physics, I attended the 2002 NASA Contact Conference, which focused on serious speculation about extraterrestrials. During the meeting a concerned participant said loudly in a sinister tone, "You have absolutely no idea what is out there!" The silence was palpable as the truth of this statement sunk in. Humans are fearful of extraterrestrials visiting Earth. Perhaps fortunately, the distances between the stars are prohibitively vast. At least this is what we novices, who are just learning to travel into space, tell ourselves.

I have always been interested in UFOs. Of course, there was the excitement that there could be aliens and other living worlds. But more exciting to me was the possibility that interstellar travel was technologically achievable. In 1988, during my second week of graduate school at Montana State University, several students and I were discussing a recent cattle mutilation that was associated with UFOs. A physics professor joined the conversation and told us that he had colleagues working at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls, Montana, where they were having problems with UFOs shutting down nuclear missiles. At the time I thought this professor was talking nonsense. But 20 years later, I was stunned to see a recording of a press conference featuring several former US Air Force personnel, with a couple from Malmstrom AFB, describing similar occurrences in the 1960s. Clearly there must be something to this.

With July 2 being World UFO Day, it is a good time for society to address the unsettling and refreshing fact we may not be alone. I believe we need to face the possibility that some of the strange flying objects that outperform the best aircraft in our inventory and defy explanation may indeed be visitors from afar – and there's plenty of evidence to support UFO sightings.

See also: Released FAA recording reveals pilot report of a UFO over Long Island
I-Team Exclusive: Nevada senator fought to save secret UFO program

Related: Pentagon's UFO Investigation Program Revealed
UFO Existence 'Proven Beyond Reasonable Doubt': Former Head Of Pentagon Program
Newly-Released Video Shows 2015 U.S. Navy Sighting of UFO


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday July 02 2018, @02:08AM (35 children)

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Monday July 02 2018, @02:08AM (#701148) Homepage

    This is why American high schools were a good thing, at least when I attended them. Because GATE classes were big on Orwell, Nietzsche, Conrad, Hesse, Camus. So those students already experienced that temporary hurdle in life, when they were listening to Nirvana and complaining about how nobody "understand them."

    Then if you're smart and patient enough to slog through those messes, you get to the Big Boys like Dostoevsky. Then if you survive that, you come full-circle into the cold and harsh anticlimax: Humans are sensuous meatbags. This must be especially problematic for space nutters, because they were fed since childhood shit like Asimov all the way up to Star Trek, where the future is so wonderous and awesome, and then the come to the cold realization that they will never in their over-educated careers experience anything they were fed growing up.

    Welcome to the real-world kiddos, and this harsh lesson doesn't just apply to space. You hope for something higher, and all you get is unmet expectations and even the fanciest shit you manage to engineer is only a small ass-hair, if you're lucky, in the grand scheme of things. You're not gonna see a moon-base, or interstellar travel. What you will see plenty of, is bullshit politics and a world run by idiots who "just don't understand you."

    And you in your folly try to understand why I drink and watch Star Trek while listening to Megadeth for fun, rather than work on becoming a Zephram Cochran.

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  • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 02 2018, @02:36AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 02 2018, @02:36AM (#701161)

    Fuck this. With our new Space Force we'll finally learn the truth and start brining home extraterrestrial trophies to hang on our space station walls.

    BTW, Trump learned the truth about Roswell. That's why we're starting up Space Force. Fools like you want us to believe what you're shoveling. Not any more. Not with a Space Force.

    • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday July 02 2018, @03:10AM (1 child)

      by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Monday July 02 2018, @03:10AM (#701170) Homepage

      1970's American Military Officer 1: " Hey, let's violate some treaties they signed in good faith and make space weapons, blow up a few Russian Satellites! Journalists don't know what happens in space!

      1970's American Military Officer 2: " Groovy. Let's do it! "

      * BLAM! *

      Public-facing 2015 American Senior Military Officer: "We have just now figured out that the Russians have been weaponizing space. This is why gibsmedat taxpayer monies so we can buy weapons, to start a new Space Force to counter Russian aggression in the cosmos. "

      • (Score: 3, Funny) by takyon on Monday July 02 2018, @03:36AM

        by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday July 02 2018, @03:36AM (#701182) Journal

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty [wikipedia.org]

        The Outer Space Treaty represents the basic legal framework of international space law. Among its principles, it bars states party to the treaty from placing weapons of mass destruction in Earth orbit, installing them on the Moon or any other celestial body, or otherwise stationing them in outer space. It exclusively limits the use of the Moon and other celestial bodies to peaceful purposes and expressly prohibits their use for testing weapons of any kind, conducting military maneuvers, or establishing military bases, installations, and fortifications (Article IV). However, the Treaty does not prohibit the placement of conventional weapons in orbit and thus some highly destructive attack strategies such as kinetic bombardment are still potentially allowable. The treaty also states that the exploration of outer space shall be done to benefit all countries and that space shall be free for exploration and use by all the States.

        That particular treaty barely does anything to stop you from having fun with Space Marines. Except that we already know what the Space Force would be doing: the same shit the Air Force does. They will launch GPS, spy satellites, maybe the occasional X-37B. And instead of stormtroopers, they will have keyboard warriors with an easier job than the drone pilots, since you can't get PTSD from looking at a bunch of numbers.

        The Space Force is just a repackaged boring wing of the Air Force. But it does have great meme potential.

        --
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 02 2018, @02:42AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 02 2018, @02:42AM (#701163)

    "Existential Crisis" in the 80s sounds kinda lame?

    During the last of a few trips (a tiny little fleck of windowpane), I was convinced that everything I knew about acid and pop culture (Albert Hofmann and Sandoz, Kesey and the Pranksters, other writers, Grateful Dead and the Acid Tests, other psychedelic music, etc) was all my hallucination. I was the acid. A few hours later, I came down...

    • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday July 02 2018, @03:03AM

      by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Monday July 02 2018, @03:03AM (#701167) Homepage

      Yeah, but at least the writing was good. And I'm not an acid freak, merely a drunk. The point I am trying to make is that the guy described in the summary is an uncool Geezer in the most sincere sense of the phrase because if he were a normal person, he would have been a Cure fan around the time of young adulthood and we wouldn't have to hear about why being an engineer sucks now.

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by takyon on Monday July 02 2018, @02:53AM (22 children)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday July 02 2018, @02:53AM (#701165) Journal

    There are basically hundreds of billions or trillions of exoplanets in our galaxy, if not more orders of magnitude. Subsurface oceans seem to be very common in our solar system, so there are probably trillions of planets or moons in the galaxy with life inside, except it is probably locked in, microbial, and will never develop much complexity or any technology. However, many exoplanets also appear to be in "habitable zones" (except still not clear if red dwarf systems could host life). The start date for life on Earth has been pushed back repeatedly. [soylentnews.org] That's important, because if life started very soon after the Earth cooled, then you could expect it to start very early on every other potentially habitable planet. Maybe 99% of them have at least microbial life if they are at least 1 billion years old. It took billions of years for upright apes to get smart and edgy on Earth, but there are stars in our galaxy that are at least 10 billion years old rather than ~5.

    So we can make a good case for the galaxy to be teeming with life. So why the Fermi paradox? Here's a really good solution: normal radio transmissions are fucking weak. Unless a nearby civilization blasts a directed message at our planet at a time when we are listening in a certain direction, nobody will notice.

    How do you find life if you can't find it on the radio? You do it with big optical telescopes aimed at exoplanets. Keep in mind that the first exoplanet was discovered in 1988, and the gas giants are the easiest ones to find. We have barely scratched the surface here. JWST has been delayed to shit (insert conspiracy theory here). Maybe JWST will discover life, but the best telescopes for looking at exoplanets would use the Sun as a gravitational lens at 550+ AU away. Which we are not doing for several decades without fancy rockets and propulsion (insert SpaceX or other conspiracy theory here).

    Finally, with all that in mind, we arrive at the UFO subject. You've probably heard that a spacefaring civilization doesn't need faster-than-light travel to conquer/explore the entire galaxy. They just need to go from one star system to the next, build ships there, send them out, rinse and repeat. But if a civilization did have something like a warp drive, they would be able to explore the galaxy in luxury. And they would probably find us soon enough.

    We've had reports of UFOs for a long time, centuries arguably. You have Air Force pilots, astronomers, and many others seeing them (and leaning towards "alien craft" rather than merely unidentified). If you can accept that the galaxy is full of life, which seems plausible based on what we've learned in the last decade, then maybe some UFO sightings are alien in origin. You don't just detect an alien TV broadcast, but you can capture video with your crappy camera if they show up in your backyard. And if we somehow manage to invent a warp drive in the next century, that will be an "aha" moment, as in: "Yeah, we have been visited by alien tourist scum."

    --
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    • (Score: 3, Funny) by coolgopher on Monday July 02 2018, @03:12AM

      by coolgopher (1157) on Monday July 02 2018, @03:12AM (#701171)

      if we somehow manage to invent a warp drive in the next century

      That person had better be named Cochrane :)

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by cubancigar11 on Monday July 02 2018, @07:06AM (12 children)

      by cubancigar11 (330) on Monday July 02 2018, @07:06AM (#701222) Homepage Journal

      What is to say that a cluster of stars is not conscious?

      Also, UFOs have vanished after invention of mobile cameras.

      My guess? It will be more like Solaris [imdb.com] - life as we don't know it.

      • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday July 02 2018, @08:08AM

        by maxwell demon (1608) on Monday July 02 2018, @08:08AM (#701233) Journal

        What is to say that a cluster of stars is not conscious?

        http://escapepod.org/2018/05/10/escape-pod-627-humans-die-stars-fade/ [escapepod.org]

        Also, UFOs have vanished after invention of mobile cameras.

        That proves they are controlled by intelligent beings. ;-)

        --
        The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
      • (Score: 2) by takyon on Monday July 02 2018, @09:59AM (10 children)

        by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday July 02 2018, @09:59AM (#701254) Journal

        Also, UFOs have vanished after invention of mobile cameras.

        They haven't. There are still plenty of sightings, videos, etc. Mobile cameras aren't great for recording distant objects in the sky, and it gets even worse in low light conditions.

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        • (Score: 4, Insightful) by FatPhil on Monday July 02 2018, @12:01PM (6 children)

          by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Monday July 02 2018, @12:01PM (#701290) Homepage
          The figures have dropped in pretty much all so-called "modern" societies but one, but the outlier is a country where two thirds of the population still believes that angels are real tangible things.

          One thing that is true to say is that the credibility of the sightings has not increased alongside the phenomenal improvements in the technology available to record and document the claimed sightings.
          --
          Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
          • (Score: 2) by takyon on Monday July 02 2018, @12:56PM (5 children)

            by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday July 02 2018, @12:56PM (#701313) Journal

            An amateur taking video of a distant light in the sky is going to look like crap even after decades of improvements. Maybe drones will make an impact by putting cameras closer to where alien spacecraft would be flying, but they could also cause UFO reports as well.

            How is the data being collected? North of God's Burgerland, sightings appear to be increasing [ctvnews.ca]:

            These are among 1,267 reported UFO sightings across Canada in 2015, the second-biggest year for unexplained alien activity in the last 30 years.

            The detailed Canadian UFO Survey released Monday by the Winnipeg-based group Ufology Research includes accounts of where, when and precisely what Canadians claim they saw in the sky last year.

            [...] The data [canadianuforeport.com] was collected from 17 sources across the country including Transport Canada, Canada National Defense, the National UFO Reporting Center and YouTube.

            If you are counting orgs like MUFON but not getting estimates that take into account YouTube, maybe you aren't counting very well at all. Ask a teenager if they have even heard of MUFON.

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            • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday July 02 2018, @01:19PM (4 children)

              by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Monday July 02 2018, @01:19PM (#701326) Homepage
              That "data" has not improved in reliability alonside the advances of technology that is now in everyone's pocket, you're proving my point. If anything, the quality of the evidence in that "data" is worse, because hokey things look hokey, and it's better to just phone in a word-of-mouth report.
              --
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              • (Score: 2) by takyon on Monday July 02 2018, @01:40PM (3 children)

                by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday July 02 2018, @01:40PM (#701334) Journal

                Perhaps the "data" is not being studied properly. Hence TFA.

                Is the smartphone camera so great at recording things in the sky? No. Are people reporting their sightings using "traditional" avenues? Maybe, maybe not. Would an excellent-looking UFO video gain traction in the age of deepfakes? Maybe, maybe not. There's a dilemma for you: any improvement in the camera situation will be overshadowed by the massive tide of online video and the ability to fake more things with machine learning. A "good" UFO video is no different than a funny cat video or meme; its viral popularity depends on factors that are not so easily reproduced and have little to do with whether an actual alien craft is recorded on camera. And the deepfakes trend will make it easier for people to produce partially or completely [wired.com] faked videos of UFOs, politicians, etc.

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                • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday July 02 2018, @02:04PM (2 children)

                  by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Monday July 02 2018, @02:04PM (#701348) Homepage
                  I've had a camphone for 10 years, deepfakes has only been around for 1. Where's the evidence from those 9 years that couldn't be deepfaked? It's not just now in 2018 that the reports have not improved in quality despite availability of commodity recording devices, it's for ever.

                  Things that violate the laws of conservation of momentum and conservation of energy are reported constantly, but never recorded. DC and Marvel probably have to take some of the blame.
                  --
                  Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
                  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Monday July 02 2018, @02:20PM (1 child)

                    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday July 02 2018, @02:20PM (#701358) Journal

                    There have been fakes before deepfakes, like the 2013 Wired article I linked where literally everything in the video was CGI, or the many crappier looking fakes. What deepfakes will do is help muddy the waters even further by putting powerful tools in the hands of the public, and will be used for more than just UFO sightings. Fake news for your eyes. Although maybe people will be too busy making deepfakes celeb porn to bother with faking UFO sightings.

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                    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @12:20AM

                      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @12:20AM (#701651)

                      https://sites.google.com/site/ourenthusiasmsasham/blah/mayanenergybeamexplained [google.com]

                      The above is a scientific explanation of why taking photos of strange phenomena with a smart phone does not immediately lead you to the truth.

                      People will jump to all kinds of weird Erich von Däniken explanations of things that have perfectly rational explanations. Don't be fooled.

        • (Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Monday July 02 2018, @12:29PM (2 children)

          by cubancigar11 (330) on Monday July 02 2018, @12:29PM (#701299) Homepage Journal

          They have decreased a lot, though. There are plenty articles about this drop in fact.

          • (Score: 2) by takyon on Monday July 02 2018, @12:47PM (1 child)

            by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday July 02 2018, @12:47PM (#701310) Journal

            That could mean any number of things. You don't need a video to make a report, but you don't need to make a report to MUFON/etc. either. Maybe the Instagram generation doesn't care about MUFON et al. and they just throw the video online, where it can sink into the abyss of thousands of other obscure videos and the many fakes, deepfakes, and reuploads.

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            • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 02 2018, @02:00PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 02 2018, @02:00PM (#701345)
              Nowadays most people are too busy looking down at their phones to spot UFOs.

              They do look up from their phones from time to time but that's just to avoid being crushed by a bus or similar.
    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday July 02 2018, @12:14PM (7 children)

      by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Monday July 02 2018, @12:14PM (#701294) Journal

      There are basically hundreds of billions or trillions of exoplanets in our galaxy, if not more orders of magnitude. Subsurface oceans seem to be very common in our solar system, so there are probably trillions of planets or moons in the galaxy with life inside, except it is probably locked in, microbial, and will never develop much complexity or any technology.

      I'd note the loose use of "probably" here. The problem with these arguments (and the Drake equation and the supposed "paradox") is that we have exactly one data point where we know life evolved. That's not enough to extrapolate, much less develop a probability distribution.

      We have absolutely no idea how common life is, microbial or otherwise. Your solution to the paradox appears to be to lower the probability of evolution of large-scale or sentient life, but the bottleneck could be other places. It could be abiogenesis itself, which we understand a lot less in some ways than evolution. Yes, biologists have a rough blueprint of how they think it might happen -- but it could be something that if you have roughly the right temps and roughly the right chemical mix, life just happens 90% of the time. Or it could be that you need really just the right temp and the right chemicals for a particular stage in the development, and if you don't life doesn't happen 99.9999999999999999% of the time. Anyone who even knows basic chemistry knows that many reactions can be incredibly sensitive to conditions.

      We just don't know. This isn't an argument against your assumption -- it's just that none of it is "probable." It's mathematically indeterminate.

      So we can make a good case for the galaxy to be teeming with life.

      Where? How? By extrapolating from one data point? Once we have maybe even one more data point where life evolved to extrapolate from, maybe we can go somewhere... but so far, we have only one. It could be that the "necessary conditions for life" you assume are a lot more selective than you think... or even a lot less selective. We simply have no data to base any supposition on.

      It took billions of years for upright apes to get smart and edgy on Earth, but there are stars in our galaxy that are at least 10 billion years old rather than ~5. [...] So why the Fermi paradox? Here's a really good solution: normal radio transmissions are fucking weak. Unless a nearby civilization blasts a directed message at our planet at a time when we are listening in a certain direction, nobody will notice.

      Yes, because humans have only been broadcasting such stuff for only ~100 years, and it's only been a few decades since we've even made it into space. But hey, we should be able to assume what civilizations that may be BILLIONS of years old can and can't do -- and obviously they'd only be broadcasting on radio! So -- huzzah! -- we've got a "good solution" to the Fermi paradox.

      Once again, sure... maybe. Again, arguing from a very parochial perspective based on one very young species that's only been playing with tech advanced enough to be noticed outside our planet for a VERY short time.

      We've had reports of UFOs for a long time, centuries arguably.

      Yes, and we've had similar numbers of reports of ghosts, elves, gnomes, fairies, strange workings of gods, etc. in the past too -- frequently believed by many of the "best authorities" of their age.

      You have Air Force pilots, astronomers, and many others seeing them (and leaning towards "alien craft" rather than merely unidentified).

      Yes, and we have lots of smart people who claim to have been abducted by aliens, often molested sexually or tested or whatever. Except it turns out that a lot of those stories are remarkably similar to older stories of things like an "incubus" or "succubus," demons who terrorize people at night. And both UFO "abductions" and these demonic phenomena are likely explained in a large number of cases by sleep paralysis [wikipedia.org]. I've experienced cases of sleep paralysis myself, and they can be terrifying. I've also had experiences when I was younger that were bad lucid dreams, but -- were I so inclined -- I might have interpreted them as involving "aliens" or some other "presence" (demonic?)... except now that I've learned about sleep paralysis, I understand exactly what was going on.

      Interesting how right around the time that sci-fi stories start becoming popular in the mid-20th century, reports of incubi and succubi no longer appear, but instead human subconscious minds now ascribe them to aliens who abduct them, huh?

      But you might say -- you're not talking about some wackos who might have had a bad dream: you're talking about reputable folks who were wide awake. Sure. Except, as with basically all "ghost sightings" and a lot of other supposed "paranormal phenomena," even reputable scientists have difficulty being sufficiently skeptical. Which is why James Randi had a thing going for so long: because he realized that people were able to fool others -- even research scientists -- if they aren't sufficiently skeptical and look for every possible other explanation for a supposed "phenomenon." As is well-known, the Pentagon, CIA, etc. spent loads of money conducting "psychic research" and other BS because smart people are very, VERY capable of believing in weird crap.

      Lastly, I'd just also note the cluster of human cognitive biases like pareidolia [wikipedia.org], where we tend to see visual patterns in random data. Past generations (and still sometimes present ones) see the Virgin Mary in a piece of toasted bread. And yet we should trust many supposed UFO sightings that are unsupported by good evidence? Generally, humans have a cognitive tendency toward apophenia [wikipedia.org] -- i.e., seeing patterns that aren't really there.

      Now, given all that, and the LONG history of humans seeing patterns in natural phenomena and ascribing meaning to them (calling them "gods" or various other supernatural things instead of "aliens"), how confident am I in reports of UFOs, which seem to be the collective delusion (see "abductions" above, which millions of Americans claim to have been part of) of the moment? Could lots of smart reputable people be ascribing meaning to stuff that isn't there? Yeah, I definitely think so.

      That said, believe it or not, I do have an open mind. And it's certainly possible aliens are visiting earth. So give me a link to your best evidence, and I'll look at it. I'm always interested in looking at stuff. But I've researched this stuff a few times before, and I've always been shocked by the paucity of strong evidence given these quotes about how so many reputable folks claim this stuff exists.

      • (Score: 2) by takyon on Monday July 02 2018, @01:24PM (6 children)

        by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday July 02 2018, @01:24PM (#701328) Journal

        Where? How? By extrapolating from one data point? Once we have maybe even one more data point where life evolved to extrapolate from, maybe we can go somewhere... but so far, we have only one. It could be that the "necessary conditions for life" you assume are a lot more selective than you think... or even a lot less selective. We simply have no data to base any supposition on.

        We are learning more about that one data point. Continually pushing back the start date for life on Earth MEANS SOMETHING. It means that abiogenesis or panspermia happened very quickly after the formation of the Earth. If life forms very quickly in an Earth-like environment, then the barriers to life forming are low. Obviously, I'm going to extrapolate this to other planetary systems. If you have Earth-like planets orbiting Sun-like stars within habitable zones, you should expect similar outcomes.

        There's little use arguing about it much longer. The stage is set for us to know more within 10 years. TESS will find exoplanets orbiting Sun-like stars, including a handful of high orbital period exoplanets. JWST will attempt to characterize exoplanet atmospheres to look for biosignatures. With another 10 years of development, and cheap BFR payloads, we could get larger telescopes like the Kilometer Space Telescope [nasa.gov] concept up with the goal of directly imaging exoplanets.

        That said, believe it or not, I do have an open mind. And it's certainly possible aliens are visiting earth. So give me a link to your best evidence, and I'll look at it. I'm always interested in looking at stuff. But I've researched this stuff a few times before, and I've always been shocked by the paucity of strong evidence given these quotes about how so many reputable folks claim this stuff exists.

        I already addressed it all in my comment. If there are no physics barriers to humans slowly spreading to other star systems, then there is an avenue for alien visitors to get here. If we were to develop faster-than-light technologies, then there is a much better avenue for alien visitors to get here. In both cases, you don't have to talk to aliens to make a conclusion about them. You use humanity's own technological development to get an idea of what is possible.

        A galaxy full of life, including the more interesting surface life (rather than locked in an icy crust), is plausible based on what we know today. We have greatly increased our knowledge of exoplanets with Kepler, and TESS, JWST, and future missions will help fill in the gaps.

        --
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        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday July 02 2018, @02:39PM (5 children)

          by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Monday July 02 2018, @02:39PM (#701373) Journal

          Continually pushing back the start date for life on Earth MEANS SOMETHING.

          Yes it does.

          It means that abiogenesis or panspermia happened very quickly after the formation of the Earth.

          Yes -- and let's be very clear there -- that's all that means. Which means absolutely nothing in terms of arguments about how commonplace life is, because a minor change in chemical conditions could introduce many orders of magnitude differences in the likelihood of a reaction. Shifting the start date of life from a billion years after formation to a few hundred million years is nowhere near as significant as potential chemical bottlenecks.

          Well, also "very quickly" is relative. I admittedly don't keep up with the detailed science on this, but from what I remember reading in the past few years and what I can find in searches, it looks like the best solid evidence is still around 500 million years after the earth formed. Whether that's "very quickly" or not, I don't know, because "quickly" is a relative term, and we have nothing to compare it to.

          If life forms very quickly in an Earth-like environment, then the barriers to life forming are low.

          There's the slippage again. What is sufficiently "Earth-like"? You don't know. You can't know. What you're relying on is basically a version of the mediocrity principle [wikipedia.org], which is an expansion of the Copernican principle [wikipedia.org]. The latter states that Earth is not cosmologically "special," in terms of its place in the universe, the local laws of physics, etc.

          And yes, the Copernican principle can and has been reasonably extended to show there are other stars like our own and that they have other planets, some of which likely have some similar characteristics (size, temperature, some basic chemical composition, etc.). Great.

          But extending this principle to assume that life is everywhere is a bit different in my view. The chemistry of life is so different and much more complex than what we find in other basic physical processes. Could it be that such chemistry naturally emerges if you only get the basic conditions right? Again, as I said, that certainly could be the case. But it could also be that there's some bottleneck somewhere in the abiogenesis or evolutionary series of steps that require very specific conditions (and certainly could be more than one). I'm not saying it's likely there is one -- I'm saying until we either (1) discovery life on a few other planets (not merely basic organic chemicals, but actual life), or (2) successfully reproduce all stages of abiogenesis in a laboratory and understand the constraints in those processes, we have absolutely no way of quantifying whether life is likely to arise on 1 out of 10 planetary bodies in the universe, or 1 out of 100, or 1 out of a million, or 1 out of a quadrillion.

          There's little use arguing about it much longer.

          Agreed. I'm not arguing your argument is implausible, by the way. I'm arguing that we simply have too little evidence to have any idea who the probabilities are. Therefore, speculating on the reason for the "Fermi paradox" is all just an exercise in speculation until we have more data points.

          I already addressed it all in my comment. If there are no physics barriers to humans slowly spreading to other star systems, then there is an avenue for alien visitors to get here. If we were to develop faster-than-light technologies, then there is a much better avenue for alien visitors to get here. In both cases, you don't have to talk to aliens to make a conclusion about them. You use humanity's own technological development to get an idea of what is possible.

          I don't mean to be argumentative here, but you're changing your claims significantly. In your last post, you were asserting that there are lots of UFOs, lots of reputable people claiming they are likely extraterrestrial in origin. I asked you for the best evidence to support such claims -- because I'm legitimately interested.

          And instead, you give a vague argument saying you've already addressed it, and we can look at our own "technical development to get an idea of what is possible" but then couple it with "***If*** we were to develop faster-than-light technologies...." Setting aside that I think it takes an incredible amount of hubris to presuppose what a billion-year-old civilization may or may not choose to do, what its behavior might be, etc., also given we have absolutely no idea of what sort of constraints there might be on biology within the universe let alone possible psychologies of aliens.... setting aside all of that, I was legitimately asking for some decent corroborated scientific evidence by the pilots, astronomers, etc. you mentioned so I could evaluate said claims. Because, once again, without said evidence, your argument devolves into "But, other places/beings COULD be like us!!... and thus maybe they're coming here!!" Yes, that's true, but we have no evidence that they should be or how likely it is that they might be.

          Maybe the coming decades will prove you right. I certainly hope the universe is teeming with life, because that might be a lot more interesting than if it weren't. But so far, we have very little evidence to suppose that's more "likely" than the rare Earth hypothesis [wikipedia.org] or many other random arguments.

          • (Score: 2) by takyon on Monday July 02 2018, @04:00PM (1 child)

            by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday July 02 2018, @04:00PM (#701424) Journal

            There's the slippage again. What is sufficiently "Earth-like"? You don't know. You can't know.

            A good starting point:

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_analog#Attributes_and_criteria [wikipedia.org]

            0.8 to 2 Earth masses. The upper limit could be conservative but that remains to be seen. Not enough mass gives you a Mars situation with atmospheric loss. Too much mass could result in a water world or very high atmospheric pressure.

            Terrestrial. Not a gas giant.

            Average temperature allows liquid water to exist on the surface.

            We can measure or infer some of these right now. There are a number of exoplanets for which we know the mass, radius, and temperature. Hubble was used [soylentnews.org] to find indirect evidence that water could exist on the surface of some of the TRAPPIST-1 exoplanets. A 2.4-meter aperture telescope launched in 1990 and upgraded in 2009 will not be the best tool for the job for very long.

            We are doing the best we can. Enough to come up with estimates such as: Number of potentially habitable planets in our galaxy: Tens of billions [arstechnica.com].

            I don't mean to be argumentative here, but you're changing your claims significantly.

            My ultimate conclusion was that "maybe some UFO sightings are alien in origin" and that if we develop faster-than-light technology, we could be almost certain that we have been visited. Faster-than-light travel would give civilizations the ability to absolutely litter themselves across the galaxy, perhaps allowing them to exist for millions or billions of years by making them resistant to extinction. Part of the civilization can die while the rest live on. Instead of presupposing what a civilization will do, presuppose that, given the capability, some small groups will likely break off the main group, following their own objectives.

            The Fermi paradox fails if we are being visited by aliens this very moment. So when you have eyewitnesses attesting to that, it becomes a possible solution to the paradox. Yes, it is too bad there is no hard proof.

            I certainly hope the universe is teeming with life, because that might be a lot more interesting than if it weren't. But so far, we have very little evidence to suppose that's more "likely" than the rare Earth hypothesis or many other random arguments.

            We have estimates of billions of potentially habitable exoplanets within the galaxy based on observations by Kepler and other missions. The Rare Earth hypothesis is dying piece by piece.

            I have laid out why I think it is plausible that, given X billion potentially habitable planets (defined as having all of the fixings of Earth, particularly liquid water), something like 0.9 * X billion could develop microbial life. Maybe I'm dead wrong, but we have good reasons to be optimistic about that while remaining agnostic about the intelligent life related parameters in the Drake equation.

            --
            [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
            • (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday July 02 2018, @11:39PM

              by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Monday July 02 2018, @11:39PM (#701635) Journal

              A good starting point:

              " rel="url2html-30655">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_analog#Attributes_and_criteria

              Those aren't criteria for planets that will support abiogenesis or where life can evolve efficiently. Those are criteria where life (at least as we know it) can survive. Those may be the same criteria, or they might be very different criteria. We have no current way of judging, since we have not observed life evolved except in the evidence from a single case.

              We have estimates of billions of potentially habitable exoplanets within the galaxy based on observations by Kepler and other missions. The Rare Earth hypothesis is dying piece by piece.

              Except I never much doubted that there would be other potentially habitable planets in the universe or in our galaxy. We just hadn't observed them, but once astronomers figured out the basics of stellar formation and system formation, it seems a reasonable supposition that you'll get some planets in the "habitable zone" with various characteristics like Earth. Yes, some of the actual authors of the original "rare Earth hypothesis" focused on a few elements that might be more commonplace than they thought -- but hardly all.

              And really they didn't even deal much with my issue -- which is really mostly about abiogenesis, since it's the part of the process I think we know least about in terms of all the details... and there are a lot. Yes, there's an outline and a lot of theories. But last time I checked, we're leagues away from being able to synthesize life from basic organic compounds in a lab (at least using processes that could reasonably be "random" and happen in a natural environment). Correct me if I'm wrong.

              I mean, have you ever looked in depth at how cell replication works and how many pieces have to come together to make that possible? I'm no expert, and I'm not arguing for "intelligent design" or some such thing -- I just think it's reasonable to withhold judgment about what is "likely" until we understand the process more... and not just go around assuming any planet that has vaguely enough liquid and a vague mix of the right elements is likely to sprout up microbes.

              I have laid out why I think it is plausible that, given X billion potentially habitable planets (defined as having all of the fixings of Earth, particularly liquid water), something like 0.9 * X billion could develop microbial life.

              Well, you've laid out that you're willing to just make the assumption that life will magically sprout up on 90% of such worlds. You have presented absolutely no evidence to support that 90% number, which could very well be 90% or 99% or 1% or 0.0001% or 0.00000000000000000000001%.

              I don't think that last one seems the most likely (though I have no evidence to support that judgment either, and I'll be straightforward about that), but from a logical and mathematical and scientific standpoint, the rational conclusion until we have further evidence of the sort I outlined in my last post is that judging among those estimates must be indeterminate, which means speculating on the reasons for the Fermi paradox is an exercise in futility.

          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday July 02 2018, @09:06PM (2 children)

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday July 02 2018, @09:06PM (#701575) Journal

            because a minor change in chemical conditions could introduce many orders of magnitude differences in the likelihood of a reaction.

            What "minor change" happens over an entire planet? Let us recall that most such things are very local and on something the size of a geologically active planet over hundreds of millions of years, there's a vast number of local environments. So while a global "minor change" can shift some environments out of whatever zone is particularly susceptible to life, it would also shift other environments into those zones.

            • (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday July 02 2018, @11:46PM (1 child)

              by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Monday July 02 2018, @11:46PM (#701638) Journal

              What "minor change" happens over an entire planet? Let us recall that most such things are very local and on something the size of a geologically active planet over hundreds of millions of years, there's a vast number of local environments.

              Yes, obviously. The question is how "special" the particular "soup" (for lack of a better word) must be. Do you assume that life just develops everywhere on a planet because it's so easy? Or is it something that needs such particular conditions that only one "soup" in one zone of Earth over one span of a few thousand years had just the right conditions... and then it gradually spread elsewhere? The latter is certainly possible. Or maybe there were various intermediate stages that served as bottlenecks and had to happen in a particular order. And if so, you don't need to worry about a change taking over an entire planet -- you have to worry about one pool meeting the criteria one time EVER and what the likelihood is.

              I'm not saying that's the way it happened. But given how different the chemistry of biology is from most other basic natural processes and how complex it is, I really don't know how hard it would be for it to spontaneously emerge. Maybe it just takes a few million years at the right vague conditions -- but we really have no evidence of that, as far as I know. (Correct me if any lab experiment has shown otherwise... otherwise it's all speculation.)

              I can make something incredibly improbable happen right now -- I can shuffle a deck of cards. It's unlikely that particular order has ever occurred in the history of the universe (even if there were millions of other civilizations out there continuously shuffling cards). Extremely improbable events happen all the time. Is the emergence of life one of those? I have no idea, but it's certainly a reasonable answer to the Fermi paradox (at least as reasonable as any other) to assume that maybe it actually depends on a chain of seemingly simple but collectively improbable events like ordering a deck of cards.

              • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday July 05 2018, @04:42AM

                by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday July 05 2018, @04:42AM (#702847) Journal

                Do you assume that life just develops everywhere on a planet because it's so easy?

                Of course not.

                Or is it something that needs such particular conditions that only one "soup" in one zone of Earth over one span of a few thousand years had just the right conditions... and then it gradually spread elsewhere?

                Pretty much. The problem here is that small changes may move the "particular conditions" around, but they don't eliminate them.

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Subsentient on Monday July 02 2018, @06:30AM (5 children)

    by Subsentient (1111) on Monday July 02 2018, @06:30AM (#701216) Homepage Journal

    The truth is, no matter whether we achieve interstellar travel or not, humanity is the keepers of their own sorrow.

    Moon base? Draconian authoritarian corporatocracy.
    Interstellar travel? Genocide of primitive aliens.
    Interstellar trade? Interstellar war.
    Colonies in other star systems? See moon base.

    The future is bleak, regardless of whether we achieve interstellar travel or not, and regardless of if there's alien life visiting us right now.

    --
    "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
    • (Score: 2, Offtopic) by bzipitidoo on Monday July 02 2018, @01:14PM (2 children)

      by bzipitidoo (4388) on Monday July 02 2018, @01:14PM (#701323) Journal

      Life doesn't have to be tragic. Try a more positive outlook.

      For example, on that Existential Question, suppose the nihilists are correct. Life has no meaning! Nothing matters! Whether or not there is a God, either way, life has no point. God's life has no more purpose or meaning than any of ours. Serving His purposes, no matter what they may be, does not add meaning to existence. Now what? You could sink into despair, crying that existence is so cold and empty and purposeless, and life is boring and tedious. Feel the ennui. Or, you could enjoy your Freedom. Freedom from crazy religious commandments. The Freedom from others' fear of a terrible, angry, strict, but entirely invented God. Freedom to explore the human condition.

      • (Score: 2) by Subsentient on Monday July 02 2018, @01:47PM (1 child)

        by Subsentient (1111) on Monday July 02 2018, @01:47PM (#701338) Homepage Journal

        My comment had nothing to do with the absurdity of existence or nihilism. It was about the innate, unfortunate nature of the human species.
        I made peace with nihilism long ago. There was a time when it tormented me, but that time has passed.

        --
        "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday July 02 2018, @09:21PM

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday July 02 2018, @09:21PM (#701581) Journal

          My comment had nothing to do with the absurdity of existence or nihilism. It was about the innate, unfortunate nature of the human species.

          Not really much of a difference. Good opportunity to feel superior to your fellow man.

    • (Score: 2, Disagree) by takyon on Monday July 02 2018, @01:52PM (1 child)

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday July 02 2018, @01:52PM (#701340) Journal

      Moon base? Draconian authoritarian corporatocracy.

      Utopia with self-sufficient utilization of available resources.

      Interstellar travel? Genocide of primitive aliens.

      Possible, but seems more unlikely than not.

      Interstellar trade? Interstellar war.

      Bad economics. There is enough solar system material within 0.05 light years to support trillions. You can get more real estate by conquering the next star system over, but there may never be a competitive advantage to shipping material from one star system to another. You are better off finding some of the millions of interstellar asteroids/comets that are supposedly entering the solar system every year, and redirecting them so that they stay within our reach permanently instead of zipping back out.

      Colonies in other star systems? See moon base.

      Let's say we colonize an Earth-like exoplanet, and it turns out that way. Your complaint is really about how your life is organized here on Earth is right now. The colony at least offers a chance to start over far away from the control of existing governments and orgs. If you're unsatisfied with Earth governments, maybe experiment with anarchy. Make the most of your bleak, sad life.

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
      • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday July 02 2018, @05:37PM

        by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Monday July 02 2018, @05:37PM (#701486) Journal

        Unfortunately, any space habitat is going to need a strong (central?) authority running it to make sure the airlocks are maintained, etc. The hopeful idea is that this strong authority could be a "Friendly AI". If so, then it could *appear* to be rather loosely organized. A more likely idea is that freedom in that situation is going to have to move into virtual reality.

        Currently the main blocker to permanent space habitats is our lack of the ability so design stable societies. There are lots of others, but in my evaluation that's the main blocker. And it's one that it's crucial to solve, as our life on Earth is running into the same problems. I think the problems may be inevitable given a dense population, fast transport, and rapid communication, but I really don't want to get rid of those. Another factor is high powered weaponry. I'd be really rather happy to get rid of that, but it's a situation where everyone needs to get rid of it at the same time, and this means all forms of weaponry....unfortunately I also don't want to get rid of advanced medical capability, and there's an conflict there, too. (I'm not just talking about nuclear weapons.)

        This comes up to one of my solutions to the Fermi Paradox: High technology civilizations destroy themselves. It's one possibility, and probably a part of the great filter. I don't think it inevitable, but we've already come within 30 seconds of doing it to ourselves. I don't think humans are capable of running a high tech civilization. We've got too many strong impulses, and vicious heuristic thought processes. They may be inherent in any naturally evolved sentient. But we're also on the brink of a strong AI, which won't necessarily have those thought processes (though it will have different ones). And it may be able to take advantage of our inherent laziness to take over running the world(s). This may be the best outcome possible. Or not.

        --
        Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
  • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday July 02 2018, @05:34PM

    by DeathMonkey (1380) on Monday July 02 2018, @05:34PM (#701483) Journal

    Meanwhile, back in reality, I carry a Star Trek communicator in my pocket and build robots as a hobby.

    Don't conflate being unwilling to be dragged into the 21st century with being unable to be dragged into the 21st century.