UFOs

[Freedomforall]

So, if there is no intelligent life here....then how are the scientists smart enough to know to look for "intelligent life?"

To turn that one on its head, what happens if life is possible using components other than hydrocarbons and water? In that case, we'd not even recognise something as alive, never mind possibly intelligent.

I'm not sure what the chemistry would look like, but what happens if it's possible to get life using silicon and nitrogen instead of carbon and oxygen?

I highly suspect that we have been looking at other life forms all along and cannot recognize them.

[Ray]

I’m sure there are alien life forms. The universe is too large for us to be an outlier. To think otherwise opens up accusations of preposterous arrogance.

However, the distances in space are huge. It’s too far. Unless you have a functioning Alcubierre warp drive, you’re a bit buggered. Of course, other civilisations may have overcome the theoretical problems of such a drive (like needing a large chunk of the Universe’s energy to work). It’s possible. But it’s unlikely.

I guess we had best take care of this planet. It’s the only one we have. Less children, less consumption, less pollution, more balance.

[Jim]

I’m sure there are alien life forms. The universe is too large for us to be an outlier. To think otherwise opens up accusations of preposterous arrogance.

The current understanding of the conditions needed for life to form makes life extraordinarily unlikely, yet we exist. If you take this as good evidence for intelligent design, as I do, it depends on the will of the designer if there is other life. If life is due solely to chance, it may be likely that our planet is the only place with life.

[FranTastic444]

The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one they said
But still they come

I’m with Ray on this one. Given the sheer number of planets in the Universe, life in some form on distant planets is inevitable but if we discount time travel and traversing vast distances through worm holes then our neighbors are just too distant for us to ever meet or communicate.

Deep space is full of, well, space. I think the Bryson Book A Short History... used the analogy that if stars were the size of motes of dust, the interior of St Paul’s Cathedral would contain only 3 planets.

[dillon]

It was indeed fascinating and disturbing to learn of the frequency of UFO incidents. I had heard this before your post. I’m guessing that either the aliens have been frightened away by man’s self-destructive nature or that they think the job of enlightening us is not worth the effort.

[6ft3Aussie]

UFOs sightings have been documented for hundreds of years, even before the time of Christ.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... _sightings

I was surprised to see reports going back such a long time. I do note that the frequency of reports has increased dramatically over the 20th century, and some very credible reports from airline pilots, in some cases reports from different pilots flying in an area, completely independently of each other. I guess they are the sort of people who re constantly looking for things around them when they're in the front seat, ever vigilant.

One that I remember when I was a kid was the Kaikoura Lights, which was an unidentified light seen from cargo flights between Christchurch and Wellington in New Zealand in December 1978, which was also tracked on radar by air traffic control. I remember when we were in the car one day driving along the coast road north of Kaikoura my parents mentioning the UFOs seen in the area, however it was in the middle of the day when we were around there.