UFO?

[soggydrysuit]

I saw something once, while stargazing - a red orb just appeared and drifted around a bit then vanished. I'm pretty sure it was a weather balloon very high up catching the light from the sun over the horizon. Had me going for a while...

Still, there's a hundred billion stars in this one galaxy and a hundred billion galaxies out there...

Space is still big enough for the nearest 'intelligent' life to be a few hundred light years away - space is big

[SammyDee]

Coulda been a UFO....
Coulda been a Chinese Lantern...Those can be trippy to watch, around the 4th of July here in the US theyre everywhere.

[Lil' Swimz$]

I saw bigfoot. We were outside at a party and say are large ape-like beast run alongside the corn field. Also saw a HUGE shadow in the sky last night.

[J-P]

Space is still big enough for the nearest 'intelligent' life to be a few hundred light years away - space is big

That is the great debate... biologists say no and astronomers say yes. I read the book "How the mind works" from Stephen J Pinker (I think that was his name) and he touched upon this topic.

A) we are all self centered.. we view the world around us from our own eyes. Thus we think that other creatures see it the same way and if they don't they should. Which is obviously not true but we inheriently think that way.

B) He posed the question "Why does an elephant have a trunk?" If you can answer that one then you begin to understand why things are the way they are here. In a different place under different conditions, why would things end up being similar?

On a side note... from some science TV (not sure how credible it is)... apparently we are the only survivor of 3 different off shoots of a similar species. There were 2 other species that died off (but forgot when) and it had to do with 1) fire and 2) meat

[pufferpuggirl]

Let me just say that when I lived in America, I had tunnel vision, not thinking much more than what was happening there in Florida where I lived, and maybe across the United States from time to time. But when I moved over here to England, you get an entirely different view of the world. It's no longer just what's going on with the US, it's what's happening in Europe and all over the world. You see the bigger picture.

The point I'm trying to make is that it's easy to have tunnel vision and just think of Earth as the one and only, the end all and be all. But as Mr Soggy pointed out, space is infinite and it's pretty awesome when you think of what could, and might well, be out there.

[J-P]

oh.. no one is saying that there is not life out there... but the question is "what is intelligent"? There are millions of creatures here with varying degrees of intelligence, as will be out there. Anything is possible, but when you are talking about a scope of that size... it kind of shortens things.

Example: with the exception of insects and plant life.. why do almost all animals have 4 limbs, 2 eyes a mouth, 2 ears and a nose? A) because we all grew from the same bacterial strain and evolved differently. Compound that by the 350,000,000 different species that exist here...and we are the only ones?

Now extrapolate that to a different world with similar conditions .. the chances of that happening again are even smaller (don't forget that we kill many new species that evolve and or those new species are consumed by another and never had a chance to start). Space is not infinite as we know the word, but it is HUGE beyond calculation.

[Lil' Swimz$]

It is hard to believe it is indefinate. I always thought its a loophole and goes around in one big circle? IDK just hypothisizing.

[SammyDee]

Space is always expanding. Even earth is gradually becoming more space out form other planets/stars/galaxies. The universe hasn't stopped expanding since the very beginning of time.

[J-P]

you'll have too look up some astro physics ... search "red shift" and "blue shift" As light progresses away from its source it changes spectrum. That amount of degradation indicates age. That is how we know where our center is. Keeping in mind "our" because there may be others out there.

[soggydrysuit]

According to my info, space is finite but unbounded. It's also expanding rapidly, although I don't really understand what that means!

[PolishPuff]

It's also expanding rapidly, although I don't really understand what that means!

It means a new star is born every day

[soggydrysuit]

Bravo, the optomist, applauded

And now gravity has been tentatatively linked or rather likened to entropy. But not really, it's just the closest way to explain some aspects of string theory to someone like me.

Disorder increases - period, that's the 1st law of thermodynamics. Well unless you do work to tidy up a bit.

Does this mean I can blame the untidiness of my fish room on gravity?!

[Ohyouknow]

Wow, I'm really surprised at how evolved this thread has gotten. Plus all the interesting links! Things I never thought were possible or could possibly see right there on videos.

I saw a UFO once, my family and I were all camping. The site is a private property lake not far out of town, and not far from a well traveled highway. There is an airport close, it is a small little local airport, no jets or airliners there. They do skydiving, glider rides and other air stuff - and use nothing more than a small puddle jumper.

We were all out, sitting around the fire, and my uncle pointed out a small light that looked like a star, but was brighter than any other star. It was keeping quite the pace across the sky, then stopped... it rotated through a few colors. (blues, reds, greens, and back to white again) Here we all were, staring up at this thing... entranced. Once it went back to a very bright white, pulsed a few times, then started off on it's path again, then abruptly changed directions a few times, then zoomed off over the horizon.

I don't know what it was, if it was our government, or extraterrestrial life forms... but I don't think we are alone in this universe. That sure would be a lot of absolutely wasted space. We can't be the only intelligent beings... Not that anything of less intelligence is 'unimportant' but it just seems like... why would there be so much empty nothing, why are we here? why wouldn't there be something somewhere else? I really think we are being kept in the dark about a lot, and I just don't see why?

[Flutter]

Intelligence = see my signature.

We each will have a different definition of intelligence. In my evolution class last year we had a huge discussion on aliens, if they're possible, their evolution, what their life could be based on, how do you define life, how do you define intelligence, etc etc. It was a lot of fun.

And JP, many biologists here believe in aliens. I think it's pretty much a given barring any strict religious beliefs.

[J-P]

Oh.. I am sure many biologists believe in aliens. How many top level ones do though? I will cite an exrpt from the book":

"... At a famous conference in 1961, the astronomer and SETI enthusiast Frank Drake noted that the number of extraterrestrial civilizations that might contact us can be estimated with the following formula:
1) The number of stars in the galaxy X
2) The fraction of stars with planets X
3) The number of planets per solar system with a life supporting environment X
4) The fraction of these planets on which life actually appears X
5) The fraction of life bearing planets on which intelligence emerges X
6) The fraction of intelligent societies willing and able to communicate with other worlds X
7) The longevity of each technology in the communicative state.

The astronomers, physicists and engineers at the conference felt unable to estimate factor 6) without a sociologist or a historian. But they felt confident in estimating factor 5), the portion of life bearing planets which intelligence emerges. They decided it was one hundred percent."

... [skipping the planet of the apes stuff] "Drake expressed these arguments in a letter to Science defending SETI against the eminent biologist Ernst Mayr. Mayr had noted that only one of the fifty million species on earth had developed civilizations, so the probability that life on a given planet would include intelligent species might very well be small. Drake replied:

The fist species to develop intelligent civilizations will discover that it is the only such species. Should it be surprised? Some must be first, and being first says nothing about how many other species had or have the potential to evolve into intelligent civilizations, or may do so in the future... Similarly, among many civilizations, one will be the first and temporarily the only one, to develop electronic technology. How else could it be? The evidence does suggest that planetary systems need to exist in sufficient benign circumstances for a few billion years for a technology using species to evolve.

To see why this thinking runs afoul of the modern theory of evolution, consider an analogy. The human brain is an exquisitely complex organ that evolved only once. The elephant's trunk, which can stack logs, uproot trees, pick up a dime, remove thorns, powder the elephant with dust, siphon water, serve as a snorkel, and scribble with a pencil, is another complex organ that only evolved once. The brain and the trunk are products of the same evolutionary force, natural selection. Imagine an astronomer on the Planet of the Elephants defending SETT, the Search for Extraterrestrial Trunks:

The fist species to develop a trunk will discover that it is the only such species. Should it be surprised? Some must be first, and being first says nothing about how many other species had or have the potential to evolve trunks, or may do so in the future... Similarly, among many trunk-bearing species, one will be the first and temporarily the only one, to powder itself with dust. The evidence does suggest that planetary systems need to exist in sufficient benign circumstances for a few billion years for trunk-using species to evolve....

This reasoning strikes us as cockeyed because the elephant is assuming that evolution did not just produce the trunk in a species on this planet but was striving to produce it in some lucky species, each waiting and hoping."

pg 151&152
"How the Mind Works" by Steven Pinker