Phoenix Network Forums

Well the idea came to me when someone posted something about a ufo sighting in the general chat, it seemed a pretty good subject so how about we discuss it seriously?
I added the pole for those who quickly want to give there opinion without much motivation although this is for what this thread was created, disscusion.

The space is huge. Therefore it's extremely unlikely that life exists only on one planet. I'm sure there are life forms somewhere out there. But humanoids with flying saucers? Doubt that.

Somebody say that aliens may be smart beings, if they are smart, why they want to fly around the world??
Don't look smart to me

i think they study us, because we are inferiors beings... like we study the apes, what do you think?

Well, please don't double post.

Like JaMaHa said, space is huuuge. There must be other life forms "out there". A famous equation calculating the number of intelligent life out in only the Milky Way always works out to be in the milllions - enough for any number of teenager aliens planting crop circles etc. The reason I don't believe in such activity is because the Earths atmosphere is bound to be so different from the other planet that sustains life. For example, life without oxygen was the norm until some few billion years ago. The chances that any other organism in the known universe was able to breathe oxygen or otherwise tolerate our atmosphere are minimal. I can't 'prove' it atm, but give me a few days and I'll have an answer unless someone else comes up with it. UFO's are useless. Our atmosphere, food and necessities of life are bound to be so very much different from any other life form. It is unlikely Homo Sapiens will ever know "the truth". It is also unlikely for so many other intelligent life forms.

Also, the distances between planets are enormous. Even if there is life 'near' us, the organisms watching us are watching stuff that happened hundreds of years ago (the speed of light being so 'limited'). Thus any contact that is made on their part will begin along the lines of "Dear sire, What a nice ruff you have, your horses look splendid, etc."

As most of you have already explained scientifically the inexistence (or at least the uselessnes) of ufo's, i might add that ufo's are mainly a cultural phenomenon and happens almost exclusively in western society and that we never hear of ufo's in africa or other areas who never had this phenomenon. Ufo believers might point out that reports from these areas are starting to appear but i would say that this is just a piece of western culture that is spreading even in those areas. The ufo phenomenon was at its height in the cold war paranoia era and now it's starting to fade away into science fiction.

Considering the vasteness of the galaxy (not to mention universe) it is possible to have a same type of life based on oxygen or carbon breathing (the same process that created the first DNA may be replicated on other planets--look at mars and youll see life wasnt as far as we thought it was) and we are now excluding all the other types of life which might have developed a different way of producing energy.

Yes sir, the universe is not just huge, it's infinite, and the one who said that, didn't say it cause of the sake of saying it =). We look at the skies during night, and we just can't count such vaste quantity of little lights, that can be from a star, another galaxie, a planet...etc.

Despite of years and years of study of the universe, loads of money invested, satellites, misions, Hubble etc etc, still that knowledge is too little, and we still know new things everyday.

So, we just can look and try to analyze and understand what's going on into our little neighbourhood. But for no reason I'm saying everything space programs are doing is worthless.

This lefts to our imagination, what's yonder our solar system, and since universe is infinite, there are chances that other places out there, had the necessary conditions to develope any form of life.

I think that can't be one single place in an infinte place, with those necessary conditions to bring life....this is just my oppinion.

I was going to refrain but I have to say this..

The universe is not infinite.



tyvm

Yeah but for our meager human standards it's so big that you maight say it's infinite.
Yes the universe is limited but once you make a line that states"this were the universe ends" you'll start wandering what's behind it (another universe, the anti-univers the thing that is not the univers on a logical status etc.) so practically you might say it's infinite, if not the universe than the multiverse.

you'll start wandering what's behind it (another universe, the anti-univers the thing that is not the univers on a logical status etc.)

.. Or, in the more conservative view, nothing at all. Besides, you wouldn't find the edge of the universe. This is all highly speculative

Besides friggin' huge != infinite


btw, did I mention ...

Well, from the discussion going on here, i have come to an inference that the many myth surrounds our concept of space-time and aliens. I am not an expert in physical cosmology or quantum gravity but here are my views:

Myth1 :Space is infinite/finite
Well, it is a scientific fact that the universe is expanding ( Edwin Hubble had proved it) at the rate defined by Hubbles Constant. Now, an expanding entity can never be described as finite or infinite. So, it is better to call universe expanding rather than arguing about finity or infinity with silly emoticons hehe
Again, it is not sure whether the universe will always keep on expanding or halt in the future or even start shrinking !!!

Myth2 :Alien exists/doesn't exist
Now, this can be very controversial topic. If we assume that the aliens exist and they are somewhere around our galaxy, still it will take them a lot of time to reach the earth. Weird enough, if they are far away from our galaxy than it will take billions of years for them to came here and exchange greetings or shower wrath on us
But scientific efforts like SETI can someday let us know the truth. As there is nothing that can be said about the existence of aliens, lets us keep the argument hot and interesting by using lots of silly looking emoticons

And, about the UFOs being a cultural phenomenon, I too agree with this view. None in our country has every mentioned about flying saucers or anything weird flying, rather most talk about ghosts and witches as form the part of our culture.

And about the edge of the universe, we are like an ant on the football, no matter how much we travel in the the universe we are never going to find its end or so.

And again for the phrase "what is behind the universe", actually advancement in physical cosmology and quark theory and M-theory has given us a whole new idea about the universe and all. They believe that, there could be many universes (called Parallel Universes) hanging around in the so called hyper space. Now, our search for aliens may not be limited just to the home universes hehe

Whatever, i would always like to meet a living being from another world.

I'm quite content by calling the universe finite. It actually doesn't make the slightest difference calling it otherwise, but if it has an end, it is finite. If someone wants to call it infinite, I'll be content to inform them only this once that they are incorrect

The last time I checked space is also curved in some wonderfully warped way so that it is not exactly of a circular shape but if you were to travel in one direction for near eternity, you would eventually end up in the same place. Which sort of means we are on the edge all the time, but it might prove difficult to punch through. One possible way to "get out" might be to plunge through into a black hole as according to Hawking, I believe it was, information is lost through them (which sort of goes against the foundations of physics). Altough the black hole would disintegrate you, a fortunate quark might be lost outside. Or something. Everyone disagrees though

What lies beyond our universe is nothing but guesswork. There might be nothing, there might be lots of universes or we might be inside a bigger universe, maybe we don't even really exist. And there's not really a chance we'll ever find out unless we, or anyone else for that matter, figure out a way to puncture space and not doom everyone and everything in the process.


As for the aliens, there really can't be any chance that there is not a living organism anywhere else in the universe. There may even have been living bacteria found on a meteorite, but that could have been just a previously unidentified bacteria. Which brings me to the ironic fact that while we still haven't near identified all the species of anything on our own planet, we are so keen on finding it outside of our world.

Actually that theory of yours about the universe been curved has been proven wrong; they did this by aproximating the mass of the universe (it was an estimative calculus ), apparently the mass of the universe it's not enough to create an attraction force strong enough to create the curve structure, even if the calculus took to few galaxies it will still be exact as the force itself will have to increase (here mass and attraction force are directly proportionate)
You say that there is nothing beyond it's limits; but nothing is acctually something otherwise we would not have a term for it (gods im using sily emoticons)
Our astronomers have already found two planets which are nearly exactly as earth, if you want alien life based on carbon and oxygen as here on earth that is the best place to look.

Ooer, a flat universe.


What term are you talking about? Nothing?

Well, the universe can never be flat.

After the Big Bang universe has been expanding in the three dimensions. And it will keep on expanding until the force of gravitation balances the force of expansion which is primarily due to the momentum of the Big Bang and some thing called 'Dark Energy' which has anti gravitation property.

If we consider, the north pole time=0 or just at the moment of big bang and the universe is expanding along the surface of the earth. If the force of gravitation is powerful enough to overpower the force of expansion, then expansion will stop and contraction begins. This contraction will go along the surface of the earth towards the south pole and again the Universe will be at the state of Singularity ie the South pole.

And about the punching of hole in the universe, Hawking and other scientists have predicted that everything that is eaten up by the BlackHole form a miniature universe or Baby Universe attached with out universe through the black hole. So travel between these Universes may be possible if we can jump into the BlackHole.

And, one of the hypothesis on creation of life on Earth also assumes that life entered to the Earth as small bacteria or virus like things through meteors.

Alien life form is being talked about all over. May be we find them one day.