Do aliens live among us?!?, do aliens live among us?!?!? [creepymusic] Options

[Warlord]

do any of you think aliens exist from what i can gather LOTS of people claim to have seen a UFO
http://www.mt.net/~watcher/carorbTH.jpg
this pic could be anything really because the darn blob is so small but still could it actually be one
http://www.alexnolan.net/articles/&ufo6.jpg
... now this pic is just stupid to me
that could be just a disk someones tossed in the sky for their dog to catch it or something

but you decide in the poll

[Tore]

If the universe is as big as scientists say, aliens exist but no aliens live on Tellus (Earth) (or do they?[creepy music])

[raynor95]

i think the aliens exist but i think they dont touch us because we are still inferior to them xD
ps: i think the second image is fake

This post has been edited by raynor95: Mar 23 2007, 12:58 AM

[Aurora196]

Well two different questions here:

Do aliens live among us? No.

Do aliens exist? I would think so. When the universe is so incredibly big I would think that somewhere there will be other lifeforms, maybe even on several other planets varying from intelligent to simple lifeforms.

[Bittah Commander]

I agree with Aurora, but about the pics... What was even the point in posting those (the are a bunch of a lot more convincing pics around the internet than those 2)?

[Clazzy]

Aliens exist, it's closed-minded and stupid to think otherwise. Considering the size of the universe and the number of stars in the universe (10^11 in the Milky Way alone) it's HIGHLY improbable to not have life at all. Alien life visiting Earth, however, is highly unlikely. Stars with the conditions for carbon-based life (don't argue with me about "other forms of life", carbon-based is quite simply the only likely way considering the composition of the universe and I can go into detail about it) are a relatively recent thing, being 6 billion years old or so. Let's pick a random star near to us, Tau Ceti, for example. For sake of argument we'll say it has a rocky planet that supports life. Tau Ceti is about 10^10 years old while the Sun is about 5x10^9 years old, so it's twice as old as our star. If sentient life similar to us formed there it was 5x10^9 years ago (assuming their solar system formed at the same rate as ours) and, unless civilization survived five billion years there, will have died out by now. If you did the hypothetical scenario with most stars you'd find that life has yet to form or is probably already extinct.

Now, what if they were still going or are at the same level of intelligence as we are now (perhaps even more advanced)? There is still a speed limit (i.e. the speed of light). It's 12 light years away. That's just over 12 years if travelling very close to the speed of light. Now, what about acceleration/deceleration? Reaching relativistic speeds requires a LOT of energy and since there's no form of friction in space you'd have to have twice the energy in order to slow down again. It's safe to say that, unless the ship can somehow be diffracted as a wave towards this planet, we won't see it in twelve years. Therefore, they'd probably travel at speeds maybe 0.0001c at maximum (about ten times faster than current space shuttles) it would take 120000 years to reach us. That long ago, there was no sentient life on our planet so aliens wouldn't have really been interested in taking the time to visit. If life is there now then they're just about figuring out we're here and if they're sending out ships (invasion fleet or whatever) then we'd have to wait a long time to welcome our new Tau Ceti overlords.

Life is out there, but we'll probably never meet it. That's what I think anyway. Just remember that the universe is quite literally massive and is already 14 billion years old, human civilization rose in the space of 10,000 years which is a pathetic time span really. Not even worth mentioning.

[ShDwBoRn]

i don't think they live among us, but they DO exist! there are in excess of a trillion stars out there and they all have some sort of celestial objects floating around them, what are the chances that earth is the only inhabited planet

[vOi!king ship]

Why do you repeat what Clazzy stated?

Stars with the conditions for carbon-based life (don't argue with me about "other forms of life", carbon-based is quite simply the only likely way considering the composition of the universe and I can go into detail about it)

OK, this is pretty interesting. Can you explain further, please?

[Clazzy]

Nuclear fusion is as follows:
Hydrogen is fused to helium. From there, lots of different elements may be made with Fe-56 being the heaviest possible element (anything after that is inefficient use of energy, this is why all heavy elements usually decay to Fe-56). Carbon, Oxygen and Nitrogen are relatively light and it only takes six, eight and seven protons respectively to make. As such, they're rather common (but still very overwhelmed by the amount of hydrogen and helium, which would be about 99% of the star).
Now a bit of chemistry. Carbon is quite an important element purely because it can form polymers (i.e. bond with up to four more atoms). These polymers (proteins) are absolutely essential to life. The only other element capable of this is Silicon (perhaps Germanium too, but that's not really important). Silicon atoms are too big and won't have as great a pull on electrons in a covalent bond, making the bond weaker. Secondly: we have CO2, they have SiO2. You may notice that the latter is sand, not good for breathing really.
Now, maybe life based on other base elements is possible, I don't know, but it'll be highly improbably given the state of the universe.

[Aro]

I do beleive there are aliens out there... I do beleive there is other life than just earth life...

But, when it comes to aliens building ships, saucers, etc. . . This is what i do not beleive.
Where would they get the meterials?

[vOi!king ship]

Hmm, Clazzy, your explanation fits perfectly. But there are two things I'd like to point out.

1.) Silicium atoms may work under certain conditions. And those conditions may be:

2.) A universe with completelly different laws of physics. Black holes change reality and we don't know what else does. So there is the probability of a universe with Iron based lifeforms.

*just being bored*

[Corsair]

Where would they get the materials?

From their planet?

I pretty much agree with Clazzy, aliens exist and any intelligent aliens that can build flying saucers capable of flying from their planet to ours in the amount of time they supposedly can wouldn't be interested in mingling with us at all

Be like us mingling with cows, you can get a suit and do it... but why would you want to?

[Clazzy]

1.) Silicium atoms may work under certain conditions. And those conditions may be:

2.) A universe with completelly different laws of physics. Black holes change reality and we don't know what else does. So there is the probability of a universe with Iron based lifeforms.

Black holes don't change reality. Black holes distort space-time like all gravitational fields, just on a stronger level. Everything seems strange in and around black holes but they mostly comply with general relativity. Once you go inside a black hole the theories start rising, and we'll probably never understand the fundamentals of their interior.
With a different universe, it could well be possible but that could be said about anything. There would be a different value for pi, the speed of light, Planck's constant, everything. The amount of matter in the universe would be different, the mass and charge of electrons may be different so there's no point talking about something we can't visualise (I certainly can't get my head around a different value of pi anyway).

[Crimsonum]

[didn't care to read any of the above replies]

All of those pictures with UFOs on them are clearly edited pictures. Don't you think it's funny that the UFOs always appear on a bright sky, or where there's never really any clouds or other sky obstacles behind them?

Aliens exist, but they don't live among us.