One small quibble on his point #3…paleontologists have made arguments that intelligence and tool use would probably have arisen with the dinosaurs absent the impact. That only pushes the emergence of intelligence back a few 10s of millions of years.
I do like his conclusion of agnosticism. To me the big stumbling block is fsubl as he points out. However, it is a chemistry question. Given the primordial soup, how did the first life form? Biologists can’t answer that one yet. Until they do his point is valid.
People have ‘likes and dislikes’ concerning most aspects of life. The left labeling people good or bad according to their ‘likes and dislikes’ might make sense to them, waste of time and effort trying to change their minds. Agree with your ‘bat shit’ determination.
Of course I believe him. He has an English accent.
My quibble is this 5.3 billion year habital lifetime for earthlike planets. He does claim to be looking at planets that are more or less very much like earth. Then he claims he did a bunch of complex statistics and calculations. OK, what variations did you include??
If our sun were moderately larger and the earth’s orbital radius increased accordingly to achieve the same earth temperatures, then the 5.3 Gyr would become much smaller. Conversely, if our sun were smaller, then this habital lifetime could be much longer than 5.3 Gyr.
I think I’ve read that if a star is much smaller than our sun, and the planet much closer than we are to our sun, so that you have to correct average temperatures again, then at some point the planet’s rotation becomes phase locked to its orbit and you get a “baked Alaska” planet. Cooked on one side and frozen on the other. I’m not sure if that is correct.
Watched most of the video. I need to persevere: just to improve my character.
My view after this partial presentation is, “this is a terminally self-referential experiment.” We only know our own world (and solar system) and we know damn little about them. For us to extrapolate to 10 exp 15 other systems? Is really absurd. …My own bias is, “life” is just an eddy on the flow of thermodynamics –a way for matter to capture energy and use it to create ever-more-complex material configurations that, once in a very blue moon, create a code to replicate themselves. And on it goes from there: a very very slight bias in the universe toward stable structures as opposed to endless blind flow.
Hey: what do I know?
Snow on Pine, the specific link for Karine Jean-Pierre is below. Yours took me to the AT main page.
She said that President Biden knows all about this from his experience on the Senate Judiciary Committee, ignoring his ugly treatment of Justice Thomas.
And then there was Alan Wilson Watts:
“We do not “come into” this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean “waves,” the universe “peoples.” Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe.”
We might be alone in the universe or just alone in our octant of the Milky Way. Statistically, the two are identical situations.
I find the statistical treatment of “are we alone?” quite compelling, but the observations driving it seem potentially flawed. By this I mean that the Fermi Paradox is mentioned in passing but not analyzed.
If there were evidence for alien intelligence, the whole discussion would be moot, so the flaws I see in Fermi are important! Simply put, a paradox has two supposedly conflicting components, but in the case of Fermi, only one is ever analyzed, the theoretical assumption of the prevalence of life which is the subject of this presentation.
Any critical analysis of the other component, the assumed absence of evidence of aliens, is routinely dismissed with much smirking and eye-rolling!
I have no intention of getting into it here, but I will simply submit that the approach to the dismissal of hundreds of years worth of potential alien reports is hardly scientific. Pejorative would be a more accurate word.
its a very vast expanse to making judgements about, now is said civilization still extant and can it communicate with us,
Without turning to a Creator: The Big Bang- who/what triggered that? There has to be a First Cause! Who/what created life on earth? It did not just happen as the happy combination of necessary chemicals in a chemical soup. That is an absurd thesis by non-chemists.
Those questions cannot be answered without turning to a Creator, whom many worship as God. How did DNA, normally in the cellular nucleus, get routinely into extra-nuclear mitochondria, where the magic of the Krebs cycle also resides?The more we learn about biology, the more a Designer seems real. At least to me.
I am increasingly convinced humanity is alone in the universe. We have had radiotelescopes since ~1960, and not one has detected an intelligible signal. Ever. That is a long time for a negative yield. Meanwhile we’ve been spraying EM transmissions outward, signalling our galaxy of our existence, since radio was invented. Has that been heard 20-30 light-years away?
Perhaps we should return to reading Genesis. As the prof says, “we have no idea what (quantity value) fl is.” With the right (correct) value for (fl), we are mathematically the ONLY life in our universe. I expect we will never know the right mathematical value of (fl), so cannot solve the equation.
Ray van Dune writes, “dismissal of hundreds of years worth of potential alien reports is hardly scientific.”
Except that personal experience in UFO observation while being a very young amateur astronomer convinced me that “expert” observation of the Heavens does not exist.
Put differently, I don’t believe such data exists because I discovered that even I could be fooled into mistaking planets, planes, and the moon for being novel and extra-terrestial objects.
How did I know? Because I would go from naked eye suspicion to binoculars, or from binos to telescopes and prove myself mistaken, every time.
Hundreds of years of Unicorn stories indicate that Unicorns exist. Prove me wrong! 🙂
A rhinoceros in reality is just a high capacity assault unicorn, everyone knows that.
sixty light years is a very band, to consider, maybe we are alone,
CB… exactly.
There are none so blind as those who will not see.
cb, and antelopes are best classed as up-gunned light reconnaissance unicorns.
T J writes: “Put differently, I don’t believe such data exists because I discovered that even I could be fooled into mistaking planets, planes, and the moon for being novel and extra-terrestial objects.”
TJ, I too am an amateur astronomer (and a pilot) and I too have seen things that I initially mistook for unknown objects, but subsequently was able to identify, including one that scared the hell out of me!
However, that does not prove to me that the anomalous sightings of thousands throughout history are false – every last one of them. No doubt many, perhaps even most, may be. But it only takes one, and there is no Fermi Paradox anymore!
That is why to treat the Fermi Paradox as one reasonable supposition vs. one absolute falsehood (that deserves no study, only derision) seems illogical to me.
I have a few comments.
1. We have had the ability to send out radio waves for only about 128 years. Longer than the average human life span, but a mere inch of time overlaid on the age of the universe – approximately 13.8 billion years.
2. The Earth is approximately 4.54 billion years old. About 7 million years ago our first human ancestors emerged. 6.9 million years later Homo Sapiens emerged. So, Homo Sapiens has been around for about 200,000 years. It took Homo Sapiens about 194,724 to develop to the point where the industrial revolution began in about 1750. The industrial revolution is now 273 years old. Our first space flights began in 1961 – 62 years ago.
3. The nearest planet to Earth that might be habitable is 4.2 light years away. That’s 6,300 of our years. Travel there is not possible with the technology we have. Can aliens travel here? The odds are vanishingly small.
4. All this information tells me that the chances that there are intelligent creatures with advanced technology who could contact us at this precise moment in time are quite small. The universe is HUGE. The time scales are also HUGE in comparison to the life span of the average human, and our ability to use technology. We cannot grasp the enormity of it all and what a tiny part we actually play in the bigger scheme of things. We assume that what has happened here must surely have happened elsewhere. Maybe, but those alien civilizations may have developed and gone extinct or are presently somewhere in the stage of the billions of years it took for life to develop here.
5. To actually travel to another habitable planet, we would have to find some way of traveling faster than the speed of light. Maybe we can find a way to do that eventually, but right now, it’s like Scotty says to Kirk, “I canna go faster, Captain.”
If the jab didn’t get ya maybe the fake farm critter for supper will.
Bloomberg report explains that while “leading scientists” are desperate to convince the public that cultured meat products won’t lead to skyrocketing cancer, “the industry doesn’t have the decades of data to prove it—so it’s trying to avoid the question instead.” https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/07/usda-rubber-stamps-public-sale-lab-grown-meat/
Don Sensing had an interesting thought as to why we haven’t encountered any space aliens: once a civilization reaches a certain level of technology, they develop computer games and become so obsessed with playing them that they don’t see any need for physical exploration.
In the beginning was the void, and liberal darkness was on the face of the deep.
And he said “Let there be more conservatives on the Supreme Court,
so that the people will have hope for a greater America.”
New judges came and joyously took their seats.
Of course, liberals kept to their dark ways.
And the mainstream media wept.
For they knew they had lost.
Their dominance ended.
Winning is wondrous.
Our hero did this.
Praised be he.
What do people here think is a good way to follow the war in France?
they seem to be in a hudna now, but eric zemmour gives you some perspective, you might have to translate the tweets, rumble has some material
Sometimes I think American adults learning French is the greatest hoax since the Moon landings.
Don’t mind me.
I’ve hit the intermediate plateau.
What do people here think is a good way to follow the war in France?
Philip Sells:
Wait until Wes Anderson makes an ironic film about it?
The little mainstream French coverage I’ve read isn’t inspiring.
how do you ‘mostly peaceful’ in French, France 24 is among the worst,
Watched some of this scientist’s presentation and his take/discussion of the usual suspects–the Fermi Paradox, the Drake Equation, etc.
It seems to me that, at our present state of knowledge, we have no way of knowing if our Galaxy or, indeed, if the Universe, is silent and devoid of life of any description—simple, complex, or what we would see as intelligent–or teeming with it, of knowing whether there currently are or ever have been Alien, extraterrestrial civilizations–even star faring civilizations—and how, or even if, they have tried to or are, at this very moment, trying to communicate with any other such civilizations which might currently exist or, even, with us.
As I see it, we know very few things really.
1. We know that (supposedly) intelligent life has developed on exactly one planet–this one–but we have no proof that life, much less intelligent life, has ever developed on any other body in our solar system, much less outside of our solar system, out in the Galaxy, or in the Universe.
2. Current estimates—likely to be raised higher as we learn more–are that there are a 100 billion (plus or minus 50 billion) stars in just our 100,000 light year across Galaxy, the Milky Way, alone, and very recent discoveries have led NASA to estimate that 17 percent of these stars are likely to have one or more planets revolving around them, so 17 billion plus planets likely in our Galaxy alone.
3. Scientists current estimate is that they believe the Universe is almost 14 billion years old.
4. More and more we are discovering and realizing that life–as we know it–can develop and exist in environments that we formerly firmly believed were hostile to life forming in them, much less existing or even thriving in them; life is tough and adaptive, and fills an enormous number of niches across a very wide range of environments.
5. Scientists have posited that there is a “Goldilocks zone,” a band of orbits at particular distances around stars which might possibly allow conditions to develop on any planets orbiting within that zone which might be conducive to the development of life like ours.
6. We know what part of the electromagnetic spectrum we here on Earth use to communicate, and we are looking for any communications on some of these same wavelengths that might be from Aliens.
7. However, since we do not have a complete understanding of all of the elements of and forces in the Universe, we have no way of knowing if any such Aliens–if they currently exist–might not be using other parts of the spectrum than those we are using or if, indeed, they might be using a form of communication which is operating on entirely different principles– something other than the electromagnetic spectrum, say, neutrinos–or perhaps even a part of that spectrum that we have yet to discover.
That, as I understand it, is the sum of the major things what we presently know (or think we know) regarding the possibility of life of any kind being present or absent in our Solar system, out in the Galaxy, and the wider Universe, hardly enough information on which to make predictions about the presence or absence of Alien life—especially intelligent Alien life–with any real confidence at all.
Could Aliens, as some theorize, have been here from the beginning, or be here now?
Well, something has been appearing to us and traversing our skies for a long, long time. I have a feeling that fairly soon we will have an answer to whether there are indeed such Aliens, and perhaps even whether they have and are visiting and observing us.
Of course, it would be much more interesting and less lonely if there were intelligent Alien life “out there,” but guesses–even “informed guesses,” or wishes are not proof.
Re: UFO sightings
I was an amateur astronomer and I did see a UFO. I had already seen planets, satellites, meteors, comets, streetlights and aircraft in the sky. This was none of those.
Unless there is an extremely large form of ball lightning which can meander about for 15-20 minutes in the Florida sky at twilight, I have no explanation.
I had friends with me who saw it. The next morning the Daytona Beach News-Journal reported a UFO chasing a car on A1A later in the evening.
Most UFO sightings are just strange lights in the sky that don’t seem like technology.
This, plus the Fermi Paradox, lead me to suspect we are not dealing with anything like Star Trek.
Well, something has been appearing to us and traversing our skies for a long, long time. I have a feeling that fairly soon we will have an answer to whether there are indeed such Aliens, and perhaps even whether they have and are visiting and observing us.
Snow on Pine:
What will you think in 20 years if no such answer reveals itself?
TL;DR:
_______________________
However, I would say that everything we know about the galaxy so far is consistent with us being alone.
Now, I would just say my real conclusion, the real point of this whole talk is to be agnostic on this, okay?
If someone asks you, “Do you believe there is life in the universe?” you don’t have to say yes or no. You can say, “I don’t know.”
–Prof. David Kipping
huxley–I will probably think that the DOD/Intelligence agency factions which want to keep any and all information about UFOs and potential Aliens closely held for their own benefit are just too strong, and have won again.
Having read science fiction all my life in one form or another, I have questions. Why would aliens want to visit the Solar System? Just for the hell of it? Why did Europeans go exploring the world? I don’t think we will be very happy to see aliens.
Straw man arguments. Parenthetically, how much do you think that shirt cost? And that little curl right in the middle of his forehead.
Couple of points: Chemistry has a different flavor…? Can there be an element with fewer than one proton and one electron? Are the valences–is that still a word–of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen different on the other side of the galaxy?
Unknown elements? Supposedly, supernovae blast their get all over the place and everybody gets some of everything it is possible to have, to a greater or lesser extent, up to the heaviest.
With a hundred billion stars, of which, say, one in a million have a planet suitable for carbon life forms–passing over the possibilities of other bases–then we have a hundred thousand suitable for life like ours. Pick your own number.
Given those, including habitable distance from the primary, what prevents life? Infinity isn’t big enough to count the number of times complex molecules bump into each other over millions of years. And then…something kind of weird. Replication. What’s preventing that. An anti-Creator?
Time? He’s presuming we need primates with big brains. But every major extinction closed off huge numbers of evolutionary possibilities and it was how long until their replacements showed up. The Ordovician/Silurian extinction was 450 million years ago. If that had not happened, evolution would not have had to start over. So whatever happened would not have hit a major road block nearly half a billion years ago. Or the Permian extinction, or the dinosaur biggy, sixty-five million years ago.
While it is inaccurate, and mechanically false, one might picture any evolutionary niche as drawing life toward it. It’s there, mutations come and go and…eventually…one is somewhat more favorably suited and….
As the Earth cooled, or the continents moved toward the poles, homeothermic became a winning proposition. That’s a start toward intelligence, although octopi might object.
Nope. Straw men.
As to Fermi….it presumes any passersby would be obvious to us. Why is that the case?
It’s been about seventy years since we started shooting large amounts–relatively speaking–or modulated electromagnetic radiation into space, looking for bombers and later for missiles. Then comes the astronomical exploration via radar.
We might not trust any combination of optical sightings, but some serious returns on, say, anti missile radar is a different issue. Do we have any? Is there any reason to think Fermi’s tourists have to have been here in the last seventy years? If not, that proves…what?
Ruppelt, in charge of Project Bluebook wrote a book about it, mid-Fifties. Lots of interesting stuff including a look into the world back then. Took his ten best sightings to Wright Pat tech analysis. Of them, said the boffins, five showed intelligent control. End of sentence. End of chapter. Never mentioned again. You’d think….maybe something might have been said. Does not prove anything except that the entire issue is really, really sensitive to some.
huxley , the proper answer to “Is there life in the universe?” “Of course there is, look around you idiot.”
huxley , the proper answer to “Is there life in the universe?” “Of course there is, look around you idiot.”
JFM:
For the purpose of this discussion the question is “Is there other life in the universe?”
And more specifically, “Is there other life in the universe of similar or more advanced intelligence?”
Just saying that there has to be other intelligent life because we are here is an assumption, so far unproveable.
I have asked this before, but what makes us certain that the most common forms of alien life would be on the SURFACE of a planet? For all we know, the most common place for alien life is beneath the surface of their planet, in caverns , caves and under water and other forms of liquid .
How many space aliens (if they exist) can dance on the head of a pin?
We acknowledge that seven tenths of Earth is covered with water. What we seem to forget is that liquid adds much , much larger potential living area than does flat land PER Square FOOT of surface area- except for that part that birds and bugs and other flyers use. Imagine a planet covered in water or other liquid. Imagine a liquid dwelling species that can survive the pressure changes over three miles of vertical distance underwater. Imagine such a planet with abundant underwater geothermal sources pumping minerals and heat from beneath as well as the ” normal ” sunlight driven sources from above. The potential volume of usable space that species could use would dwarf the space of a land based creature with a similar surface area. Would a deep dwelling species ever even gaze at the stars and wonder? Would an intelligent, water based life form, even with hands, ever tinker with electricity?
As to Fermi….it presumes any passersby would be obvious to us. Why is that the case?
Richard Aubrey:
It’s not necessarily the case. The point, though, is if ETs are out there, why aren’t some of them detectible?
Anti-Fermi arguments usually boil down to a laundry list of rationalizations explaining why we don’t detect them, which I don’t find satisfying.
And I still suspect that the Inverse Square law, combined with natural radio interference, may be messing with our observations more so than scientist wish to admit to. One little lightning storm comes along and I have problems with reception with the TV antenna.
I love the topic of this thread (but haven’t watched the video yet) and don’t have much time to comment now, nor did I on neo’s other, recent post on the topic. But it interests me so much I’ll type something quickly.
The only tool we have to make a guess (unless we hear from someone) is science and I appreciate the scientific tools and tests humans are doing to try to answer the question, “is anyone else out there?” However, if one looks at any of our current, scientific formulations there are such glaring unknowns as to make any confident conjecture pointless.
A big unknown is the primordial soup question. There are almost certainly planets like ours near stars like ours with elements like our planet has. But does the mere existence of the right ingredients in the soup pot guarantee life?
And even if life begins what of all the other steps necessary to get to cells, cells coordinating, organs, organs coordinating? Is intelligent life without something like cooperating cells possible?
And then, even if a species capable of intelligence occurs is it a guarantee that technology capable of extra-planetary communication and/or travel evolves? Think of the hundreds of thousands of years humans existed on Earth with no one stumbling on to the technology to create and harness electricity, let alone the internal combustion engine. For hundreds of thousands of years such innovations were not inevitable. What technology did humans have in 1500 AD that humans did not have in 1500 BC?
Rufus T. Firefly:
Extrapolating from your technology argument….
What technology could we have in a thousand years or hundred thousand or a million? How much more impact would we have on our solar system and local region of the galaxy? Doesn’t it seem likely we would be more detectible then?
Then flip that around ask why there aren’t ETs out there much more advanced than we are impacting their local region in ways even we could detect?
It’s a thought experiment, of course, and doesn’t prove anything. Nonetheless it is a question I find perplexing.
The anti-Fermi position seems to assume we are looking for an ET of roughly similar technology to ours. Such an ET would be difficult for us to find now, though exoplanet research is advancing rapidly.
I also give a lot of importance to a point I first read from Carl Sagan (although others have certainly had a similar thought):
A society advanced enough to travel light years to visit us would not just buzz around, or make crop circles or eviscerate bovines. Think about Columbus or Captain Cook or Magellan on their voyages. Lewis and Clark. They required immense resources from formal governments and they had mandates for what to do if they encountered other, intelligent life. Why wouldn’t they let us know they are here? Communicate with us? Share and/or trade and/or teach and/or attack us? Interstellar travel requires immense resources, planning and risk. Is it likely a species would visit us without letting us know?
Re: Indy 5
A minor horror movie, “Insidious: The Red Door” opened Thursday and beat Indy 5 at the box office. No one saw this coming, much less Disney/Lucas.
The Disney/Lucas people are still making confident happy talk about how they’ll reach $1 bil, but it’s nearly impossible to see how that happens, given the usual decay of box office returns over time.
Plus, “Mission Impossible 7” is opening on July 12 and is expected to crush “Indy 5” ticket sales.
Disney/Lucas does see Paramount/Tom Cruise as their big rival. D/L is planning to launch a new spy franchise to compete.
Good luck. Tom Cruise is a Scientology nut, but he know how to entertain.
It sure looks to me like Disney is hitting the wall and I’ll be fascinated to see how it plays out.
Is it likely a species would visit us without letting us know?
Rufus T. Firefly:
Hard to say.
I’m more interested in the possibility that an advanced civilization might simply make their presence obvious because they were “landscaping” their area of the galaxy — building Dyson spheres or something.
“Don Sensing….”
Actually, we’ve already been “visited”…i.e., if Genesis 6:1-4 is anything to go by….(YMMV certainly….)
But might this suggest that THEIR “Prime Directive” is to explore the universe, check out the local chicks, enjoy some intimacy, say “Thanks, that was great, but I’ve got to move on”—they’re great at learning foreign languages—and then head to the next planet?
Inter-stellar “anthropology”? AND/OR sowing wild oats…or the closest inter-planetary equivalent? Mixing business and pleasure? Or merely “Following the—soft—Science”?
(Following this line of speculation, might the constellations therefore just be one big pin-up calendar…?)
Engineer Jeffostop breaks down the transcript of messages between the Titanic bound sub OceanGate and its surface mother ship, Polar Explorer, here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Dj8IJbP41c
These seem to be leaked texts, which reveal problems at 3500 meters depth (the Titanic is at 3800m).
The sub commander was wrestling between alarms going off, untoward hull sounds, and an effort to reverse the dive and surface more quickly.
Jeff avers that the rate of descent may have been up to 50% faster than precedent, and instead of taking a 2.5 hour dive to reach the Titanic, there were getting close maybe an hour earlier.
Interesting stuff. Nothing gory.
Huxley:
There’s a lot of space in space and a lot of time in time.
Fermi does nor require the alien to be zipping though our radar envelope in the last seventy years, nor to land and announce itself.
I dismiss optical sightings for purposes of discussion.
RE: UFOs
What amazes me is the ability of people to ignore what is right in front of their faces.
Someone recently commented about the thousands of UFO reports.
Well, from what I have been reading, it is more like tens, or even hundreds of thousands of such reports each year, and–based on their experience, people who study UFOs believe that only 10% of such sightings are ever reported–what’s more, UFOs are being seen in all parts of the globe, not just here in the U.S., these things are criss crossing the globe.
They are everywhere.
Eliminate all of the various misperceptions, and figure that the top 5 plus percent of these reports are actual UFOs, things that can’t be “identified” as being something normal and/or prosaic, and that’s still a whole hell of a lot of these objects flying around.
Even the dismissive head of ARRO, in his last briefing to Congress, had to admit to these UFOs as being seen all over the world, illustrating this by showing a surveillance video of a UFO in the shape of a metallic sphere flying over what appeared to be an active combat zone in the Middle East.
Of course, since such sightings are probably, as a matter of policy, usually just not reported—the recent Las Vegas story an exception*—people might be excused if they are deliberately being kept from being able to form a conception of magnitude of the UFO problem; the alarming, and apparently increasing in number, the very large number of such world-wide sightings.
Actually Unicorns are Narwhals that fell into the trans cult and got “treated” by trans-affirming veterinary surgeons. Which proves the point that Aliens, UFOs, and Unicorns are real. Case over. “We come in peace. BZZZAP!”
huxley @ 1:23am,
Not only does Tom Cruise know how to entertain, he also knows to not insult the audience.
Not showing contempt for one’s customers seems like a fundamental concept of business and marketing, yet many of our media’s highest paid people do not seem to understand it.
huxley @ 1:02am,
I do think about that a lot. The pace of technological advancement once a society figures out how to create and harness electricity (and printing presses and steam, internal combustion, nuclear power…) is a very interesting topic, and a whole different can of beans.
Open Thread Sunday: Back to the real world, Russo-Ukraine War
How Wars End – Negotiations, Coercion & War Termination Theory – Perun
Timestamps:
00:00:00 — How Wars End
00:00:48 — What Am I Talking About?
00:02:09 — Understanding War As “Negotiation”
00:04:53 — Demands & Coercion
00:09:38 — An Optimum Way Forward
00:14:49 — Identifying Key Inputs
00:29:19 — A Complicated Calculus
00:40:11 — Perception & Information Asymmetry
00:43:50 — So How Does It End?
00:51:23 — Paths To Peace
00:58:01 — Conclusions
00:58:54 — Channel Update
re ‘ufo’: Due probably to personal situation / location (Taiwan) Scott hasn’t been keeping his site updated as often as usual, hopefully he’ll be back at it soon. Just FYI:
Even if some of the UFOs are alien in origin, that does not guarantee they are crewed vessels. Just look at where we are with both drones and AI at the moment. These may be deep space drones, with the alien creators , far, far away.
I am also open to the idea that some of this is supernatural.
well now they do, they found someone worse than the atlanta mayor
Not showing contempt for one’s customers seems like a fundamental concept of business and marketing, yet many of our media’s highest paid people do not seem to understand it.
==
Michael Medved offered twenty-odd years ago that filmmakers work to impress their peers, and that accounts for the recycling of themes which fail with audiences every time. Given the financial stakes, that seems very strange. Disney would certainly benefit from a 1980s style corporate raider. I’ve been wondering if corporation law has changed in ways that have made hostile take-overs insuperably difficult.
”I will probably think that the DOD/Intelligence agency factions which want to keep any and all information about UFOs and potential Aliens closely held for their own benefit are just too strong, and have won again.”
So it’s an unfalsifiable hypothesis. Which makes it a religion, not science.
Apparently a bi-partisan coalition of members of Congress, very unusual for this time of extreme political division–who have been given secret, classified briefings on UFOs–must think that there is actually something there, because not only have they crafted and seen passed into law, for three consecutive years now, legislation containing increasingly strong language, creating AARO within DOD to investigate UFOs, asking asking for any information about UFOs held by the government, and protecting any whistleblowers who come forward with such information, but the latest proposed language about UFOs—20 pages or so of very specific legislation–now references “non-human” craft and materials and craft of “non-earth origin.”*
Members of Congress, such as Lynn Chenney (ex that is) and AOC?
Grasping at straws it seems.
Or another way to waste money, in a bipartisan way.
om.
Money is being wasted, but if I get this right, the sightings are freebies, what you get when you’re looking for or at something else.So the money was already sunk, for better or worse.
It’s the paper, the copies, the officials’ time, various recordings to be stored. So far, chump change compared to, say, searching for the cocaine villain.
Yeah they can spend their time on UFOs or the things their constituents think are important. You elect someone to do the people’s business in the House; although the main job of a Representative is staying electable, so what other time he/she has is kind of limited. They don’t flap their jaws for free and they only have a limited amount of time to do Congressional business. Not that there are actual important things to do or to prevent the Democrats and Brandon from doing (sarc). UFO mental masturbation in Congress helps no one.
But then again maybe they have legions of UFO-obsessed constituents that need the “facts.”
Art Deco @ 4:19,
I don’t know of any legal changes that make corporate raiding more difficult, but Disney would be a huge entity to take over. And it’s very complex. I’m not sure who would want to tackle it?
The stock price is almost certainly low due to mismanagement, but a nearly $170Bn market cap is a big hurdle to get over. A company would have to offer share holders a premium to get agreement on an offer, or, in a corporate raider scenario, buy up enough shares to gain control. Very, very deep pockets.
I assume you’ve heard of Nelson Peltz’ attempts to gain a board seat? He may have more leverage at the next board meeting.
Apparently we can put ” om ” into the ” …mind’s made up , there are no aliens near Earth… ” category.
Alien Confused As Earth Leaders Try To Explain All The Human Genders
The Babylon Bee
The only thing that has been conclusively demonstrated is that there is no intelligent life on earth.
(Present company excepted, of course.)
Au contraire:
Everyone knows they are in Area 51, or Roswell, or Antarctica, or in the deep dark recesses of the super secret military industrial complex warehouses (with the Ark of the Covenant). Science fiction is still fiction. Project Blue Book was a thing way back in the last century, first heard of it and read the Blue Book in the early 1960s. Funny the UFOs are still almost as provable now as they were then.
Created by the U.S. Navy’s Industrial Incentive Division and the Office of Strategic Service (OSS) during WWII, this “Nazi version” of the Normandy invasion is a translated, authentic German newsreel. The strategy at work here is taken from Frank Capra, who used authentic enemy newsreels and motion picture films in his “Why We Fight” series to provide insight into the Axis. This film, like “Why We Fight”, was intended to make its intended audience — American war workers to whom these types of incentive films were shown —outraged, helping them focus on the vital task of production.
The film shows the considerable German coastal defenses at Normandy, and the organized, efficient, and effective resistance they offered on the beaches at 2:00. At 2:29, the pre-dawn aerial attacks by the Allies are met with heavy gunfire. At 3:20, Allied ships encounter barrage mines and light German naval units enter the battle. At 4:48, heavy German artillery enters the battle and makes direct strikes on the invasion fleet. At 5:30 coastal defense are seen including pillboxes and anti-personnel barbed wire and emplacements. At 6:00, SS troops oppose a landing with flame throwing weapons. At 6:22, wrecked landing craft are shown. At 8:11, U.S. Airborne troops who are now prisoner are shown. At 9:20, wrecked WACO gliders are shown as well as Canadian prisoners. At 10:30 the battle continues at Cairns, with heavy bombing by aircraft opposed by railroad-mounted AA guns. At 12:00, civilians are shown fleeing the Allied invasion, as German armored divisions with tanks move forward. A wrecked Canadian Sherman tank is seen at 13:40. In short, the “German version of Invasion” portrays the German Army in the aftermath of D-Day, apparently winning many battles and turning the tide of war in favor of the Wehrmacht. The film also illustrates how Germany believes it is far from beaten. A unique look at the war from the other side!
We encourage viewers to add comments and, especially, to provide additional information about our videos by adding a comment! See something interesting? Tell people what it is and what they can see by writing something for example: “01:00:12:00 — President Roosevelt is seen meeting with Winston Churchill at the Quebec Conference.”
This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections
“…Disney is…”
Fuggedaboudit.
It’s a Mickey Mouse organization (as the old joke goes…but for some reason, they’re trying incredibly hard to show us that it’s NOT a joke…).
RE: UFOs-
If you firmly believe that there is no such thing as Aliens, and that UFOs are all just misperceptions of natural things, well, then, the actions that members of Congress are taking with regard to what you see as the illusory subjects of UFOs, secret crash retrievals and reverse engineering programs, and Aliens are wastes of time and money.
As I see it, though, what is happening is that a few members of Congress have seen enough in the classified briefings that they have gotten to realize that we may be facing a major–perhaps even one of those fabled “existential” threats–one that needs action on an urgent basis.
And, so, some, in this particular instance, and on this particular subject, some members of Congress have dispensed with the usual empty, divisive rhetoric and posturing, and are trying to drag information on the above subjects out of programs and activities buried deep within our government’s classified programs which have been hidden from them for many decades, so that they can judge for themselves– and for us–the nature of what we are facing, if it is a threat, and what needs to be done.
Showboaters in Congress? Inconceivable. These one just identified an “exestential” unverifiable subject.
Question.
Will the answer to the UFO “exestential” ultimate question be found before you or I meet our maker? No? Then maybe you are wasting your time in the here and now. But you be you.
Well, Episcopalians, maybe.
Yeah, I’ve seen a few of those…
Original question: Are we alone? Speaker attempted to prove a negative, considering the numbers of possibilities. Left a number of holes.
Are there planets with other life forms which are intelligent? Why not?
Have said intelligent life forms managed interstellar travel? We have, see Voyager. Be awhile before it goes motoring past some other planet with the capability to spot it. But there is time.
Are any of the former hanging out in our neighborhood? Various phenomena need to be proven negatively.
Oumuamua was an enormous rock, zipping through our solar system. It came from interstellar space. Not one of our Oort Cloud thingies. Rock. Which means it was once part of a solar system, in a body large enough to compress various compounds into rock, and made late enough in galactic life to have accumulated the heavier elements manufactured and then generously distributed by supernovae.
Okay. How did it get loose from its primary? An unlikely combination of mutually-reinforcing slingshots?
One article says there are probably one interstellar body a year coming through but they’re too faint to easily detect. Since we’re so small and….that’s a lot of rocks out there running around loose.
Whatever got them loose might well apply to somebody else’s interplanetary vehicles. Could be some time, obviously, like maybe 300k years.
Wouldn’t explain the foo fighters or other phenomena, but not entirely out of the bounds.
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One small quibble on his point #3…paleontologists have made arguments that intelligence and tool use would probably have arisen with the dinosaurs absent the impact. That only pushes the emergence of intelligence back a few 10s of millions of years.
I do like his conclusion of agnosticism. To me the big stumbling block is fsubl as he points out. However, it is a chemistry question. Given the primordial soup, how did the first life form? Biologists can’t answer that one yet. Until they do his point is valid.
The people at the White House are bat shit crazy.
See https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/07/karine_jeanpierre_racial_preferences_are_an_important_constitutional_right_.htmlhttps://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/07/karine_jeanpierre_racial_preferences_are_an_important_constitutional_right_.html
@ Snow on Pine ~
People have ‘likes and dislikes’ concerning most aspects of life. The left labeling people good or bad according to their ‘likes and dislikes’ might make sense to them, waste of time and effort trying to change their minds. Agree with your ‘bat shit’ determination.
Of course I believe him. He has an English accent.
My quibble is this 5.3 billion year habital lifetime for earthlike planets. He does claim to be looking at planets that are more or less very much like earth. Then he claims he did a bunch of complex statistics and calculations. OK, what variations did you include??
If our sun were moderately larger and the earth’s orbital radius increased accordingly to achieve the same earth temperatures, then the 5.3 Gyr would become much smaller. Conversely, if our sun were smaller, then this habital lifetime could be much longer than 5.3 Gyr.
I think I’ve read that if a star is much smaller than our sun, and the planet much closer than we are to our sun, so that you have to correct average temperatures again, then at some point the planet’s rotation becomes phase locked to its orbit and you get a “baked Alaska” planet. Cooked on one side and frozen on the other. I’m not sure if that is correct.
Watched most of the video. I need to persevere: just to improve my character.
My view after this partial presentation is, “this is a terminally self-referential experiment.” We only know our own world (and solar system) and we know damn little about them. For us to extrapolate to 10 exp 15 other systems? Is really absurd. …My own bias is, “life” is just an eddy on the flow of thermodynamics –a way for matter to capture energy and use it to create ever-more-complex material configurations that, once in a very blue moon, create a code to replicate themselves. And on it goes from there: a very very slight bias in the universe toward stable structures as opposed to endless blind flow.
Hey: what do I know?
Snow on Pine, the specific link for Karine Jean-Pierre is below. Yours took me to the AT main page.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/07/karine_jeanpierre_racial_preferences_are_an_important_constitutional_right_.html
She said that President Biden knows all about this from his experience on the Senate Judiciary Committee, ignoring his ugly treatment of Justice Thomas.
And then there was Alan Wilson Watts:
“We do not “come into” this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean “waves,” the universe “peoples.” Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe.”
We might be alone in the universe or just alone in our octant of the Milky Way. Statistically, the two are identical situations.
I find the statistical treatment of “are we alone?” quite compelling, but the observations driving it seem potentially flawed. By this I mean that the Fermi Paradox is mentioned in passing but not analyzed.
If there were evidence for alien intelligence, the whole discussion would be moot, so the flaws I see in Fermi are important! Simply put, a paradox has two supposedly conflicting components, but in the case of Fermi, only one is ever analyzed, the theoretical assumption of the prevalence of life which is the subject of this presentation.
Any critical analysis of the other component, the assumed absence of evidence of aliens, is routinely dismissed with much smirking and eye-rolling!
I have no intention of getting into it here, but I will simply submit that the approach to the dismissal of hundreds of years worth of potential alien reports is hardly scientific. Pejorative would be a more accurate word.
its a very vast expanse to making judgements about, now is said civilization still extant and can it communicate with us,
Without turning to a Creator: The Big Bang- who/what triggered that? There has to be a First Cause! Who/what created life on earth? It did not just happen as the happy combination of necessary chemicals in a chemical soup. That is an absurd thesis by non-chemists.
Those questions cannot be answered without turning to a Creator, whom many worship as God. How did DNA, normally in the cellular nucleus, get routinely into extra-nuclear mitochondria, where the magic of the Krebs cycle also resides?The more we learn about biology, the more a Designer seems real. At least to me.
I am increasingly convinced humanity is alone in the universe. We have had radiotelescopes since ~1960, and not one has detected an intelligible signal. Ever. That is a long time for a negative yield. Meanwhile we’ve been spraying EM transmissions outward, signalling our galaxy of our existence, since radio was invented. Has that been heard 20-30 light-years away?
Perhaps we should return to reading Genesis. As the prof says, “we have no idea what (quantity value) fl is.” With the right (correct) value for (fl), we are mathematically the ONLY life in our universe. I expect we will never know the right mathematical value of (fl), so cannot solve the equation.
Ray van Dune writes, “dismissal of hundreds of years worth of potential alien reports is hardly scientific.”
Except that personal experience in UFO observation while being a very young amateur astronomer convinced me that “expert” observation of the Heavens does not exist.
Put differently, I don’t believe such data exists because I discovered that even I could be fooled into mistaking planets, planes, and the moon for being novel and extra-terrestial objects.
How did I know? Because I would go from naked eye suspicion to binoculars, or from binos to telescopes and prove myself mistaken, every time.
Hundreds of years of Unicorn stories indicate that Unicorns exist. Prove me wrong! 🙂
A rhinoceros in reality is just a high capacity assault unicorn, everyone knows that.
sixty light years is a very band, to consider, maybe we are alone,
CB… exactly.
There are none so blind as those who will not see.
cb, and antelopes are best classed as up-gunned light reconnaissance unicorns.
T J writes: “Put differently, I don’t believe such data exists because I discovered that even I could be fooled into mistaking planets, planes, and the moon for being novel and extra-terrestial objects.”
TJ, I too am an amateur astronomer (and a pilot) and I too have seen things that I initially mistook for unknown objects, but subsequently was able to identify, including one that scared the hell out of me!
However, that does not prove to me that the anomalous sightings of thousands throughout history are false – every last one of them. No doubt many, perhaps even most, may be. But it only takes one, and there is no Fermi Paradox anymore!
That is why to treat the Fermi Paradox as one reasonable supposition vs. one absolute falsehood (that deserves no study, only derision) seems illogical to me.
I have a few comments.
1. We have had the ability to send out radio waves for only about 128 years. Longer than the average human life span, but a mere inch of time overlaid on the age of the universe – approximately 13.8 billion years.
2. The Earth is approximately 4.54 billion years old. About 7 million years ago our first human ancestors emerged. 6.9 million years later Homo Sapiens emerged. So, Homo Sapiens has been around for about 200,000 years. It took Homo Sapiens about 194,724 to develop to the point where the industrial revolution began in about 1750. The industrial revolution is now 273 years old. Our first space flights began in 1961 – 62 years ago.
3. The nearest planet to Earth that might be habitable is 4.2 light years away. That’s 6,300 of our years. Travel there is not possible with the technology we have. Can aliens travel here? The odds are vanishingly small.
4. All this information tells me that the chances that there are intelligent creatures with advanced technology who could contact us at this precise moment in time are quite small. The universe is HUGE. The time scales are also HUGE in comparison to the life span of the average human, and our ability to use technology. We cannot grasp the enormity of it all and what a tiny part we actually play in the bigger scheme of things. We assume that what has happened here must surely have happened elsewhere. Maybe, but those alien civilizations may have developed and gone extinct or are presently somewhere in the stage of the billions of years it took for life to develop here.
5. To actually travel to another habitable planet, we would have to find some way of traveling faster than the speed of light. Maybe we can find a way to do that eventually, but right now, it’s like Scotty says to Kirk, “I canna go faster, Captain.”
If the jab didn’t get ya maybe the fake farm critter for supper will.
Bloomberg report explains that while “leading scientists” are desperate to convince the public that cultured meat products won’t lead to skyrocketing cancer, “the industry doesn’t have the decades of data to prove it—so it’s trying to avoid the question instead.” https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/07/usda-rubber-stamps-public-sale-lab-grown-meat/
Don Sensing had an interesting thought as to why we haven’t encountered any space aliens: once a civilization reaches a certain level of technology, they develop computer games and become so obsessed with playing them that they don’t see any need for physical exploration.
See my post here:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/45870.html
Conservatives Credit Trump’s SCOTUS Appointments for Slaying Roe V. Wade, Affirmative Action
In the beginning was the void, and liberal darkness was on the face of the deep.
And he said “Let there be more conservatives on the Supreme Court,
so that the people will have hope for a greater America.”
New judges came and joyously took their seats.
Of course, liberals kept to their dark ways.
And the mainstream media wept.
For they knew they had lost.
Their dominance ended.
Winning is wondrous.
Our hero did this.
Praised be he.
a quintissential line from a film
https://twitter.com/QTRBlackGarrett/status/1677567276298412032
What do people here think is a good way to follow the war in France?
they seem to be in a hudna now, but eric zemmour gives you some perspective, you might have to translate the tweets, rumble has some material
Sometimes I think American adults learning French is the greatest hoax since the Moon landings.
Don’t mind me.
I’ve hit the intermediate plateau.
What do people here think is a good way to follow the war in France?
Philip Sells:
Wait until Wes Anderson makes an ironic film about it?
The little mainstream French coverage I’ve read isn’t inspiring.
how do you ‘mostly peaceful’ in French, France 24 is among the worst,
Watched some of this scientist’s presentation and his take/discussion of the usual suspects–the Fermi Paradox, the Drake Equation, etc.
It seems to me that, at our present state of knowledge, we have no way of knowing if our Galaxy or, indeed, if the Universe, is silent and devoid of life of any description—simple, complex, or what we would see as intelligent–or teeming with it, of knowing whether there currently are or ever have been Alien, extraterrestrial civilizations–even star faring civilizations—and how, or even if, they have tried to or are, at this very moment, trying to communicate with any other such civilizations which might currently exist or, even, with us.
As I see it, we know very few things really.
1. We know that (supposedly) intelligent life has developed on exactly one planet–this one–but we have no proof that life, much less intelligent life, has ever developed on any other body in our solar system, much less outside of our solar system, out in the Galaxy, or in the Universe.
2. Current estimates—likely to be raised higher as we learn more–are that there are a 100 billion (plus or minus 50 billion) stars in just our 100,000 light year across Galaxy, the Milky Way, alone, and very recent discoveries have led NASA to estimate that 17 percent of these stars are likely to have one or more planets revolving around them, so 17 billion plus planets likely in our Galaxy alone.
3. Scientists current estimate is that they believe the Universe is almost 14 billion years old.
4. More and more we are discovering and realizing that life–as we know it–can develop and exist in environments that we formerly firmly believed were hostile to life forming in them, much less existing or even thriving in them; life is tough and adaptive, and fills an enormous number of niches across a very wide range of environments.
5. Scientists have posited that there is a “Goldilocks zone,” a band of orbits at particular distances around stars which might possibly allow conditions to develop on any planets orbiting within that zone which might be conducive to the development of life like ours.
6. We know what part of the electromagnetic spectrum we here on Earth use to communicate, and we are looking for any communications on some of these same wavelengths that might be from Aliens.
7. However, since we do not have a complete understanding of all of the elements of and forces in the Universe, we have no way of knowing if any such Aliens–if they currently exist–might not be using other parts of the spectrum than those we are using or if, indeed, they might be using a form of communication which is operating on entirely different principles– something other than the electromagnetic spectrum, say, neutrinos–or perhaps even a part of that spectrum that we have yet to discover.
That, as I understand it, is the sum of the major things what we presently know (or think we know) regarding the possibility of life of any kind being present or absent in our Solar system, out in the Galaxy, and the wider Universe, hardly enough information on which to make predictions about the presence or absence of Alien life—especially intelligent Alien life–with any real confidence at all.
Could Aliens, as some theorize, have been here from the beginning, or be here now?
Well, something has been appearing to us and traversing our skies for a long, long time. I have a feeling that fairly soon we will have an answer to whether there are indeed such Aliens, and perhaps even whether they have and are visiting and observing us.
Of course, it would be much more interesting and less lonely if there were intelligent Alien life “out there,” but guesses–even “informed guesses,” or wishes are not proof.
Re: UFO sightings
I was an amateur astronomer and I did see a UFO. I had already seen planets, satellites, meteors, comets, streetlights and aircraft in the sky. This was none of those.
Unless there is an extremely large form of ball lightning which can meander about for 15-20 minutes in the Florida sky at twilight, I have no explanation.
I had friends with me who saw it. The next morning the Daytona Beach News-Journal reported a UFO chasing a car on A1A later in the evening.
Most UFO sightings are just strange lights in the sky that don’t seem like technology.
This, plus the Fermi Paradox, lead me to suspect we are not dealing with anything like Star Trek.
Well, something has been appearing to us and traversing our skies for a long, long time. I have a feeling that fairly soon we will have an answer to whether there are indeed such Aliens, and perhaps even whether they have and are visiting and observing us.
Snow on Pine:
What will you think in 20 years if no such answer reveals itself?
TL;DR:
_______________________
However, I would say that everything we know about the galaxy so far is consistent with us being alone.
Now, I would just say my real conclusion, the real point of this whole talk is to be agnostic on this, okay?
If someone asks you, “Do you believe there is life in the universe?” you don’t have to say yes or no. You can say, “I don’t know.”
–Prof. David Kipping
huxley–I will probably think that the DOD/Intelligence agency factions which want to keep any and all information about UFOs and potential Aliens closely held for their own benefit are just too strong, and have won again.
Having read science fiction all my life in one form or another, I have questions. Why would aliens want to visit the Solar System? Just for the hell of it? Why did Europeans go exploring the world? I don’t think we will be very happy to see aliens.
Straw man arguments. Parenthetically, how much do you think that shirt cost? And that little curl right in the middle of his forehead.
Couple of points: Chemistry has a different flavor…? Can there be an element with fewer than one proton and one electron? Are the valences–is that still a word–of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen different on the other side of the galaxy?
Unknown elements? Supposedly, supernovae blast their get all over the place and everybody gets some of everything it is possible to have, to a greater or lesser extent, up to the heaviest.
With a hundred billion stars, of which, say, one in a million have a planet suitable for carbon life forms–passing over the possibilities of other bases–then we have a hundred thousand suitable for life like ours. Pick your own number.
Given those, including habitable distance from the primary, what prevents life? Infinity isn’t big enough to count the number of times complex molecules bump into each other over millions of years. And then…something kind of weird. Replication. What’s preventing that. An anti-Creator?
Time? He’s presuming we need primates with big brains. But every major extinction closed off huge numbers of evolutionary possibilities and it was how long until their replacements showed up. The Ordovician/Silurian extinction was 450 million years ago. If that had not happened, evolution would not have had to start over. So whatever happened would not have hit a major road block nearly half a billion years ago. Or the Permian extinction, or the dinosaur biggy, sixty-five million years ago.
While it is inaccurate, and mechanically false, one might picture any evolutionary niche as drawing life toward it. It’s there, mutations come and go and…eventually…one is somewhat more favorably suited and….
As the Earth cooled, or the continents moved toward the poles, homeothermic became a winning proposition. That’s a start toward intelligence, although octopi might object.
Nope. Straw men.
As to Fermi….it presumes any passersby would be obvious to us. Why is that the case?
It’s been about seventy years since we started shooting large amounts–relatively speaking–or modulated electromagnetic radiation into space, looking for bombers and later for missiles. Then comes the astronomical exploration via radar.
We might not trust any combination of optical sightings, but some serious returns on, say, anti missile radar is a different issue. Do we have any? Is there any reason to think Fermi’s tourists have to have been here in the last seventy years? If not, that proves…what?
Ruppelt, in charge of Project Bluebook wrote a book about it, mid-Fifties. Lots of interesting stuff including a look into the world back then. Took his ten best sightings to Wright Pat tech analysis. Of them, said the boffins, five showed intelligent control. End of sentence. End of chapter. Never mentioned again. You’d think….maybe something might have been said. Does not prove anything except that the entire issue is really, really sensitive to some.
huxley , the proper answer to “Is there life in the universe?” “Of course there is, look around you idiot.”
huxley , the proper answer to “Is there life in the universe?” “Of course there is, look around you idiot.”
JFM:
For the purpose of this discussion the question is “Is there other life in the universe?”
And more specifically, “Is there other life in the universe of similar or more advanced intelligence?”
Just saying that there has to be other intelligent life because we are here is an assumption, so far unproveable.
I have asked this before, but what makes us certain that the most common forms of alien life would be on the SURFACE of a planet? For all we know, the most common place for alien life is beneath the surface of their planet, in caverns , caves and under water and other forms of liquid .
How many space aliens (if they exist) can dance on the head of a pin?
We acknowledge that seven tenths of Earth is covered with water. What we seem to forget is that liquid adds much , much larger potential living area than does flat land PER Square FOOT of surface area- except for that part that birds and bugs and other flyers use. Imagine a planet covered in water or other liquid. Imagine a liquid dwelling species that can survive the pressure changes over three miles of vertical distance underwater. Imagine such a planet with abundant underwater geothermal sources pumping minerals and heat from beneath as well as the ” normal ” sunlight driven sources from above. The potential volume of usable space that species could use would dwarf the space of a land based creature with a similar surface area. Would a deep dwelling species ever even gaze at the stars and wonder? Would an intelligent, water based life form, even with hands, ever tinker with electricity?
As to Fermi….it presumes any passersby would be obvious to us. Why is that the case?
Richard Aubrey:
It’s not necessarily the case. The point, though, is if ETs are out there, why aren’t some of them detectible?
Anti-Fermi arguments usually boil down to a laundry list of rationalizations explaining why we don’t detect them, which I don’t find satisfying.
And I still suspect that the Inverse Square law, combined with natural radio interference, may be messing with our observations more so than scientist wish to admit to. One little lightning storm comes along and I have problems with reception with the TV antenna.
I love the topic of this thread (but haven’t watched the video yet) and don’t have much time to comment now, nor did I on neo’s other, recent post on the topic. But it interests me so much I’ll type something quickly.
The only tool we have to make a guess (unless we hear from someone) is science and I appreciate the scientific tools and tests humans are doing to try to answer the question, “is anyone else out there?” However, if one looks at any of our current, scientific formulations there are such glaring unknowns as to make any confident conjecture pointless.
A big unknown is the primordial soup question. There are almost certainly planets like ours near stars like ours with elements like our planet has. But does the mere existence of the right ingredients in the soup pot guarantee life?
And even if life begins what of all the other steps necessary to get to cells, cells coordinating, organs, organs coordinating? Is intelligent life without something like cooperating cells possible?
And then, even if a species capable of intelligence occurs is it a guarantee that technology capable of extra-planetary communication and/or travel evolves? Think of the hundreds of thousands of years humans existed on Earth with no one stumbling on to the technology to create and harness electricity, let alone the internal combustion engine. For hundreds of thousands of years such innovations were not inevitable. What technology did humans have in 1500 AD that humans did not have in 1500 BC?
Rufus T. Firefly:
Extrapolating from your technology argument….
What technology could we have in a thousand years or hundred thousand or a million? How much more impact would we have on our solar system and local region of the galaxy? Doesn’t it seem likely we would be more detectible then?
Then flip that around ask why there aren’t ETs out there much more advanced than we are impacting their local region in ways even we could detect?
It’s a thought experiment, of course, and doesn’t prove anything. Nonetheless it is a question I find perplexing.
The anti-Fermi position seems to assume we are looking for an ET of roughly similar technology to ours. Such an ET would be difficult for us to find now, though exoplanet research is advancing rapidly.
I also give a lot of importance to a point I first read from Carl Sagan (although others have certainly had a similar thought):
A society advanced enough to travel light years to visit us would not just buzz around, or make crop circles or eviscerate bovines. Think about Columbus or Captain Cook or Magellan on their voyages. Lewis and Clark. They required immense resources from formal governments and they had mandates for what to do if they encountered other, intelligent life. Why wouldn’t they let us know they are here? Communicate with us? Share and/or trade and/or teach and/or attack us? Interstellar travel requires immense resources, planning and risk. Is it likely a species would visit us without letting us know?
Re: Indy 5
A minor horror movie, “Insidious: The Red Door” opened Thursday and beat Indy 5 at the box office. No one saw this coming, much less Disney/Lucas.
https://variety.com/2023/film/box-office/insidious-the-red-door-opening-day-indiana-jones-5-second-weekend-1235664130/
The Disney/Lucas people are still making confident happy talk about how they’ll reach $1 bil, but it’s nearly impossible to see how that happens, given the usual decay of box office returns over time.
Plus, “Mission Impossible 7” is opening on July 12 and is expected to crush “Indy 5” ticket sales.
Disney/Lucas does see Paramount/Tom Cruise as their big rival. D/L is planning to launch a new spy franchise to compete.
Good luck. Tom Cruise is a Scientology nut, but he know how to entertain.
It sure looks to me like Disney is hitting the wall and I’ll be fascinated to see how it plays out.
Is it likely a species would visit us without letting us know?
Rufus T. Firefly:
Hard to say.
I’m more interested in the possibility that an advanced civilization might simply make their presence obvious because they were “landscaping” their area of the galaxy — building Dyson spheres or something.
We are looking for possible Dyson spheres:
https://www.sciencealert.com/researchers-just-found-a-second-dyson-sphere-star
That was a most enjoyable video!
“Don Sensing….”
Actually, we’ve already been “visited”…i.e., if Genesis 6:1-4 is anything to go by….(YMMV certainly….)
But might this suggest that THEIR “Prime Directive” is to explore the universe, check out the local chicks, enjoy some intimacy, say “Thanks, that was great, but I’ve got to move on”—they’re great at learning foreign languages—and then head to the next planet?
Inter-stellar “anthropology”? AND/OR sowing wild oats…or the closest inter-planetary equivalent? Mixing business and pleasure? Or merely “Following the—soft—Science”?
(Following this line of speculation, might the constellations therefore just be one big pin-up calendar…?)
Engineer Jeffostop breaks down the transcript of messages between the Titanic bound sub OceanGate and its surface mother ship, Polar Explorer, here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Dj8IJbP41c
These seem to be leaked texts, which reveal problems at 3500 meters depth (the Titanic is at 3800m).
The sub commander was wrestling between alarms going off, untoward hull sounds, and an effort to reverse the dive and surface more quickly.
Jeff avers that the rate of descent may have been up to 50% faster than precedent, and instead of taking a 2.5 hour dive to reach the Titanic, there were getting close maybe an hour earlier.
Interesting stuff. Nothing gory.
Huxley:
There’s a lot of space in space and a lot of time in time.
Fermi does nor require the alien to be zipping though our radar envelope in the last seventy years, nor to land and announce itself.
I dismiss optical sightings for purposes of discussion.
RE: UFOs
What amazes me is the ability of people to ignore what is right in front of their faces.
Someone recently commented about the thousands of UFO reports.
Well, from what I have been reading, it is more like tens, or even hundreds of thousands of such reports each year, and–based on their experience, people who study UFOs believe that only 10% of such sightings are ever reported–what’s more, UFOs are being seen in all parts of the globe, not just here in the U.S., these things are criss crossing the globe.
They are everywhere.
Eliminate all of the various misperceptions, and figure that the top 5 plus percent of these reports are actual UFOs, things that can’t be “identified” as being something normal and/or prosaic, and that’s still a whole hell of a lot of these objects flying around.
Even the dismissive head of ARRO, in his last briefing to Congress, had to admit to these UFOs as being seen all over the world, illustrating this by showing a surveillance video of a UFO in the shape of a metallic sphere flying over what appeared to be an active combat zone in the Middle East.
Of course, since such sightings are probably, as a matter of policy, usually just not reported—the recent Las Vegas story an exception*—people might be excused if they are deliberately being kept from being able to form a conception of magnitude of the UFO problem; the alarming, and apparently increasing in number, the very large number of such world-wide sightings.
* See https://www.newsweek.com/did-night-vision-footage-show-alien-las-vegas-crash-report-1806008
Actually Unicorns are Narwhals that fell into the trans cult and got “treated” by trans-affirming veterinary surgeons. Which proves the point that Aliens, UFOs, and Unicorns are real. Case over. “We come in peace. BZZZAP!”
huxley @ 1:23am,
Not only does Tom Cruise know how to entertain, he also knows to not insult the audience.
Not showing contempt for one’s customers seems like a fundamental concept of business and marketing, yet many of our media’s highest paid people do not seem to understand it.
huxley @ 1:02am,
I do think about that a lot. The pace of technological advancement once a society figures out how to create and harness electricity (and printing presses and steam, internal combustion, nuclear power…) is a very interesting topic, and a whole different can of beans.
Open Thread Sunday: Back to the real world, Russo-Ukraine War
How Wars End – Negotiations, Coercion & War Termination Theory – Perun
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnvJzup8i-c
Timestamps:
00:00:00 — How Wars End
00:00:48 — What Am I Talking About?
00:02:09 — Understanding War As “Negotiation”
00:04:53 — Demands & Coercion
00:09:38 — An Optimum Way Forward
00:14:49 — Identifying Key Inputs
00:29:19 — A Complicated Calculus
00:40:11 — Perception & Information Asymmetry
00:43:50 — So How Does It End?
00:51:23 — Paths To Peace
00:58:01 — Conclusions
00:58:54 — Channel Update
re ‘ufo’: Due probably to personal situation / location (Taiwan) Scott hasn’t been keeping his site updated as often as usual, hopefully he’ll be back at it soon. Just FYI:
https://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/
Powerline covers a song that our hostess once highlighted.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/07/sunday-morning-coming-down-165.php
Even if some of the UFOs are alien in origin, that does not guarantee they are crewed vessels. Just look at where we are with both drones and AI at the moment. These may be deep space drones, with the alien creators , far, far away.
I am also open to the idea that some of this is supernatural.
Ah, the sweet smell of face palm in the morning….
(Or should that be, “the sweet smell of reparations…?)
“Georgia mayor held at gunpoint after being accused of breaking into lake house: ‘Do you know who the f–k I am?’
https://nypost.com/2023/07/09/do-you-know-who-the-fk-i-am-georgia-mayor-arrested-for-trespassing-burglary/
well now they do, they found someone worse than the atlanta mayor
Not showing contempt for one’s customers seems like a fundamental concept of business and marketing, yet many of our media’s highest paid people do not seem to understand it.
==
Michael Medved offered twenty-odd years ago that filmmakers work to impress their peers, and that accounts for the recycling of themes which fail with audiences every time. Given the financial stakes, that seems very strange. Disney would certainly benefit from a 1980s style corporate raider. I’ve been wondering if corporation law has changed in ways that have made hostile take-overs insuperably difficult.
https://www.breitbart.com/middle-east/2023/07/09/biden-doubles-down-refusing-netanyahu-visit-over-extreme-cabinet-members/
”I will probably think that the DOD/Intelligence agency factions which want to keep any and all information about UFOs and potential Aliens closely held for their own benefit are just too strong, and have won again.”
So it’s an unfalsifiable hypothesis. Which makes it a religion, not science.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12271851/Biden-administration-helped-firm-land-deal-stop-fentanyl-coming-Mexico-despite-FBI-probe.html
RE: UFOs and Congress
Apparently a bi-partisan coalition of members of Congress, very unusual for this time of extreme political division–who have been given secret, classified briefings on UFOs–must think that there is actually something there, because not only have they crafted and seen passed into law, for three consecutive years now, legislation containing increasingly strong language, creating AARO within DOD to investigate UFOs, asking asking for any information about UFOs held by the government, and protecting any whistleblowers who come forward with such information, but the latest proposed language about UFOs—20 pages or so of very specific legislation–now references “non-human” craft and materials and craft of “non-earth origin.”*
* See https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/4067865-congress-doubles-down-on-explosive-claims-of-illegal-ufo-retrieval-programs/
Members of Congress, such as Lynn Chenney (ex that is) and AOC?
Grasping at straws it seems.
Or another way to waste money, in a bipartisan way.
om.
Money is being wasted, but if I get this right, the sightings are freebies, what you get when you’re looking for or at something else.So the money was already sunk, for better or worse.
It’s the paper, the copies, the officials’ time, various recordings to be stored. So far, chump change compared to, say, searching for the cocaine villain.
Yeah they can spend their time on UFOs or the things their constituents think are important. You elect someone to do the people’s business in the House; although the main job of a Representative is staying electable, so what other time he/she has is kind of limited. They don’t flap their jaws for free and they only have a limited amount of time to do Congressional business. Not that there are actual important things to do or to prevent the Democrats and Brandon from doing (sarc). UFO mental masturbation in Congress helps no one.
But then again maybe they have legions of UFO-obsessed constituents that need the “facts.”
Art Deco @ 4:19,
I don’t know of any legal changes that make corporate raiding more difficult, but Disney would be a huge entity to take over. And it’s very complex. I’m not sure who would want to tackle it?
The stock price is almost certainly low due to mismanagement, but a nearly $170Bn market cap is a big hurdle to get over. A company would have to offer share holders a premium to get agreement on an offer, or, in a corporate raider scenario, buy up enough shares to gain control. Very, very deep pockets.
I assume you’ve heard of Nelson Peltz’ attempts to gain a board seat? He may have more leverage at the next board meeting.
Apparently we can put ” om ” into the ” …mind’s made up , there are no aliens near Earth… ” category.
Maybe this will clear up some of the UFO questions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enisdXlVhzE
Alien Confused As Earth Leaders Try To Explain All The Human Genders
The Babylon Bee
The only thing that has been conclusively demonstrated is that there is no intelligent life on earth.
(Present company excepted, of course.)
Au contraire:
Everyone knows they are in Area 51, or Roswell, or Antarctica, or in the deep dark recesses of the super secret military industrial complex warehouses (with the Ark of the Covenant). Science fiction is still fiction. Project Blue Book was a thing way back in the last century, first heard of it and read the Blue Book in the early 1960s. Funny the UFOs are still almost as provable now as they were then.
Found this on my YouTube sidebar – fascinating.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLJ-3T7K9rE
Created by the U.S. Navy’s Industrial Incentive Division and the Office of Strategic Service (OSS) during WWII, this “Nazi version” of the Normandy invasion is a translated, authentic German newsreel. The strategy at work here is taken from Frank Capra, who used authentic enemy newsreels and motion picture films in his “Why We Fight” series to provide insight into the Axis. This film, like “Why We Fight”, was intended to make its intended audience — American war workers to whom these types of incentive films were shown —outraged, helping them focus on the vital task of production.
The film shows the considerable German coastal defenses at Normandy, and the organized, efficient, and effective resistance they offered on the beaches at 2:00. At 2:29, the pre-dawn aerial attacks by the Allies are met with heavy gunfire. At 3:20, Allied ships encounter barrage mines and light German naval units enter the battle. At 4:48, heavy German artillery enters the battle and makes direct strikes on the invasion fleet. At 5:30 coastal defense are seen including pillboxes and anti-personnel barbed wire and emplacements. At 6:00, SS troops oppose a landing with flame throwing weapons. At 6:22, wrecked landing craft are shown. At 8:11, U.S. Airborne troops who are now prisoner are shown. At 9:20, wrecked WACO gliders are shown as well as Canadian prisoners. At 10:30 the battle continues at Cairns, with heavy bombing by aircraft opposed by railroad-mounted AA guns. At 12:00, civilians are shown fleeing the Allied invasion, as German armored divisions with tanks move forward. A wrecked Canadian Sherman tank is seen at 13:40. In short, the “German version of Invasion” portrays the German Army in the aftermath of D-Day, apparently winning many battles and turning the tide of war in favor of the Wehrmacht. The film also illustrates how Germany believes it is far from beaten. A unique look at the war from the other side!
We encourage viewers to add comments and, especially, to provide additional information about our videos by adding a comment! See something interesting? Tell people what it is and what they can see by writing something for example: “01:00:12:00 — President Roosevelt is seen meeting with Winston Churchill at the Quebec Conference.”
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“…Disney is…”
Fuggedaboudit.
It’s a Mickey Mouse organization (as the old joke goes…but for some reason, they’re trying incredibly hard to show us that it’s NOT a joke…).
RE: UFOs-
If you firmly believe that there is no such thing as Aliens, and that UFOs are all just misperceptions of natural things, well, then, the actions that members of Congress are taking with regard to what you see as the illusory subjects of UFOs, secret crash retrievals and reverse engineering programs, and Aliens are wastes of time and money.
As I see it, though, what is happening is that a few members of Congress have seen enough in the classified briefings that they have gotten to realize that we may be facing a major–perhaps even one of those fabled “existential” threats–one that needs action on an urgent basis.
And, so, some, in this particular instance, and on this particular subject, some members of Congress have dispensed with the usual empty, divisive rhetoric and posturing, and are trying to drag information on the above subjects out of programs and activities buried deep within our government’s classified programs which have been hidden from them for many decades, so that they can judge for themselves– and for us–the nature of what we are facing, if it is a threat, and what needs to be done.
Showboaters in Congress? Inconceivable. These one just identified an “exestential” unverifiable subject.
Question.
Will the answer to the UFO “exestential” ultimate question be found before you or I meet our maker? No? Then maybe you are wasting your time in the here and now. But you be you.
Well, Episcopalians, maybe.
Yeah, I’ve seen a few of those…
Original question: Are we alone? Speaker attempted to prove a negative, considering the numbers of possibilities. Left a number of holes.
Are there planets with other life forms which are intelligent? Why not?
Have said intelligent life forms managed interstellar travel? We have, see Voyager. Be awhile before it goes motoring past some other planet with the capability to spot it. But there is time.
Are any of the former hanging out in our neighborhood? Various phenomena need to be proven negatively.
Oumuamua was an enormous rock, zipping through our solar system. It came from interstellar space. Not one of our Oort Cloud thingies. Rock. Which means it was once part of a solar system, in a body large enough to compress various compounds into rock, and made late enough in galactic life to have accumulated the heavier elements manufactured and then generously distributed by supernovae.
Okay. How did it get loose from its primary? An unlikely combination of mutually-reinforcing slingshots?
One article says there are probably one interstellar body a year coming through but they’re too faint to easily detect. Since we’re so small and….that’s a lot of rocks out there running around loose.
Whatever got them loose might well apply to somebody else’s interplanetary vehicles. Could be some time, obviously, like maybe 300k years.
Wouldn’t explain the foo fighters or other phenomena, but not entirely out of the bounds.