Simple logic
November 28, 2005After reading Eugenia’s blog, I felt the urge to post my own opinion on aliens and the whole UFO crap.
Do I believe life exists outside of our planet? Oh yes. Why do I believe that? Simple numbers, people. The current dominant scientific standpoint is that the universe is infinite. This means that there’s an infinite amount of galaxies. That, in turn, means there’s an infinite amount of stars; infinite amount of solar systems; infinite amount of planets; and thus, an infinite amount of planets with the right circumstances for life. Hence, there is life outside of our planet.
That was simple, wasn’t it?
Now, do these lifeforms come to earth? No. A definite, big, and firm, NO. Even though my above explanation for the existance of life also implies that there is an infite amount of lifeforms similar to ourselves, they won’t be visiting us. Again, the explanation is remarkably simple: if these lifeforms are as advanced, technology-wise, as us, then they can’t visit us. Same goes for if they are less advanced as us. If they are more advanced than us, then they have no reason whatsoever to visit us; seeing there’s an infinite amount of lifeforms in the universe, why would they bother visiting a lifeform from which they’ve got nothing to learn, while there are so many other lifeforms out there much more interesting?
So there. They do exist, but don’t come here. All achieved via simple logic.
World | 
Thom, there is always a reason to visit “compatible” worlds. Why do people go to Africa for safari or to Hawaii for holidays? Or why researchers go to Antartica?
Same thing for them, when a world is deemed “compatible” and given that they have the ability to bend the fabric of space and travel among worlds in an instant (according to Einstein’s theory), they have every reason to come over here every now and then.
Creatures that have developed technology are *by default* curious creatures. You can’t create technology in the first place if you are not curious about how things work or how things are. And that curiosity is what leads them here, the same way Christopher Colombus or Vasco deGama were curious about their world around them.
Your arguments would be more solid if you would just say that “there is no such technology that can lead them here in a timely manner” rather than “why would they ever wanna come here?”. The second argument is just bad and doesn’t hold up. There is always a reason to conquer or learn or use a whole planet (full of life) for.
Comment by Eugenia — November 28, 2005 @ 9:54 pm
Thom, there is always a reason to visit “compatible” worlds. Why do people go to Africa for safari or to Hawaii for holidays? Or why researchers go to Antartica?
No.
Time is finite. There’s no endless amount of time. No matter how advanced these creatures might be, they have to live by the same rules as we do. Therefore, if these lifeforms that are more advanced than us want to visit a planet full of life, then why would they choose earth, with so many sentient beings, so many individuals searching the skies, so many different nations that have different opinions? I mean, if they wanna keep it secret, then how do they align the Russians, Americans, Europeans, Chinese, …, …?
There is, seeing my reasoning, an infinite amount of planets similar to ours but without pesky sentient beings.
And that curiosity is what leads them here, the same way Christopher Colombus or Vasco DeGama were curious about their world around them.
DaGama and Colon weren’t curious about the world around them. They were looking for money and fame. They didn’t risc their lives, plus those of their men, out of curiosity. They did it because they wanted the wealth and beauty of Asia (remember, Colon was sailing to India, he wasn’t sailing to find new land).
If these aliens are like Colon, then they’re also after resources. And if they can visit us, it means they are more advanced than us. Hence, they could simply kill us all and take whatever the earth has to offer.
Now, you say, but what if they are peaceful beings? Well– then my previous argument about there being an infinite amount of more interesting or less difficult planets to land on comes into play.
—
Your reasoning is too Star-Trekkish to me. You’re point-of-view is that somehow we have something to offer.
When was the last time you learned something from a tribsman in Sulawesi that you could apply to your digital, western way of life?
Comment by Administrator — November 28, 2005 @ 10:44 pm
I agree with Thom here, but to be fair:
“Time is finite. There’s no endless amount of time. No matter how advanced these creatures might be, they have to live by the same rules as we do.”
we do not know all the rules.
Comment by Trent Townsend — November 28, 2005 @ 11:06 pm
Thom, I really disagree with you.
>I mean, if they wanna keep it secret, then how do they align the Russians, Americans, Europeans, Chinese, …, …?
Russians only started investigating the aliens in the ’60s, 20-30 years after the Americans started doing so. UK and France *have* published their UFO reports and France’s report is the most optimistic report of all (called “Cometa” published in a military French magazine a few years ago). As for Chinese, well, I am sure they agree with the Americans on the topic of aliens and the secrecy about them. It’s on the best interest of a dictatoric country to keep this information hidden.
As for Canada, there was an article on CNN about it just a few days ago (that mysteriously has dissapeared since, I couldn’t find it to link it anymore).
>There’s no endless amount of time
I really don’t understand what you mean by that. There is no reason why most of the aliens to go to other planets but some of them visiting this one. If you are talking about “travelling time”, I must mention again Einstein’s theory, which makes space travelling pretty much an instanteous affair.
>DaGama and Colon weren’t curious about the world around them.
I beg to differ. While money is always a driving factor, curiousity is also another one. You can’t get that job and carry it through if you are not just a bit curious yourself. Look at the explorers of the 16th century for example!
And why do we explore the moon and Mars today too?
>Hence, they could simply kill us all and take whatever the earth has to offer.
Resources is only one reason why would someone want to travel to a far away land for. Research, experiements, holidays, sex, curiosity, too much time on their hands, are some more reasons too.
Besides, who is to say that there is not already an intersterllar “federation” that prevents its members from killing other beings? If there are too many more-advanced-than-us beings on this galaxy, then it only makes sense that they have already established such a federation a long time ago already. Think of it as UN, it is only natural to happen at some point.
> an infinite amount of more interesting or less difficult planets to land on comes into play.
Why all aliens have to go to the same planets? What if someone wants to go elsewhere, e.g. Earth? I mean, I know people going to ugly bars for a drink, and yet they are nicer ones just next to the one they usually go.
>When was the last time you learned something from a tribsman in >Sulawesi that you could apply to your digital, western way of life?
Sorry, but this argument is just stupid. I can always ask you then why did the Europeans went and colonized Africa in the first place? I mean, there is always a reason to GO there. Even if you don’t learn anything, there is always something to GAIN from it, and you don’t have to kill everybody in the process either.
And if the Europeans went there just for the resources, why do researchers and scientists still go there and study these people? They have nothing to learn from them, and YET they go and study them.
I keep this opinion firm: There is ALWAYS a *good reason* to be found for visiting a compatible world to your own. Humans not being “interesting” as a species is not a good argument to the opposite. Who knows? Maybe they are interested in our cows instead. But whatever their real reason, there are numerous reasons to be assumed.
Comment by Eugenia — November 28, 2005 @ 11:11 pm
I’ll reply tomorrow CET.
Comment by Administrator — November 28, 2005 @ 11:27 pm
Found the link back at Y! News:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/prweb/20051124/bs_prweb/prweb314382_1
Comment by Eugenia — November 29, 2005 @ 12:07 am
The current dominant scientific standpoint is that the universe is infinite. This means that there’s an infinite amount of galaxies. That, in turn, means there’s an infinite amount of stars; infinite amount of solar systems; infinite amount of planets; and thus, an infinite amount of planets with the right circumstances for life. Hence, there is life outside of our planet.
Technically speaking, that’s, uhm, a false assumption leading to a fallacious proof. The current dominant scientific standpoint is that the universe is _finite_ of a size of the order of its age in light years ( that would be about 15 billion light years ). So it’s finite, but pretty big :)
What you can still say is that it’s pretty probable that there’s life out there since it’s so big, and Miller’s experiments in the ’50s proved that the basic chemicals of life are quite easy to produce in a fairly common planetary environment (ammonia, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, electric discharges). From those chemical building blocks to more complex structures like the proteins or virii we know the step is still pretty big, but as we said, the universe is huge :)
There’s statistical reasons against the idea of alien visitors, though, because the distances involved are so horribly huge. It’s like leaving a man on foot, with very little equipment in the middle of an hostile desert, and telling him: ‘Ok, this desert is 5000 kms across, and there are 5 oasis in it. Try reaching one’. Let’s say the man _knows_ the direction: then he can reach one if it is inside his ‘reaching span’ ie how much he can travel before dying as a dried up skeleton.
Taking this similtude to interstellar travel, aliens _could_ theoretically reach us if they knew the exact direction and had an ideal veichle, because by relativity theory they can travel for a long time at near-light speed, and their ‘inner’ time will only advance a little bit.
The really difficult question is: how can they know we’re right here? Because we’ve only been emitting radio signals for about a century, thus our faint beacon only reached the immediate neibourhood. Let’s say a civilization emits radio signals for 1000 years ( and that’s a loong time, seeing how _we_ are faring with the planet :) ) then it can only be picked up and reached by aliens standing within less than 500 light years away… and that’s still too little compared to the real galactic sizes (a disc 100000 light years across, 4000 light years thick), and hopes for aliens that are on their own radio civilization stage or better, and have really good near-lightspeed ships :)
Comment by Kitty — November 29, 2005 @ 9:22 am
Thom, I agree with you that there really is no reason for an alien race to come to our planet but that doesn’t mean they don’t. Saying that they being so advanced couldn’t learn anything from us doesn’t mean some wouldn’t come and study us. Just take a look at our own scientists, Studying fish at the deepest depths of the ocean, or studying primates on some island that was previously untouched by humankind. There is no need or real reason, but we do it all the same and I’m sure there could be some aliens who think the same way.
We can’t travel vast distances of space in a timly manner, but then again, a gorilla in an affrican jungle can’t fly across the Atlantic (unless forced to by people) but that doesn’t stop us from studying them.
Comment by Ian Christie — November 29, 2005 @ 3:07 pm
>The really difficult question is: how can they know we’re right here?
This is very easy to answer.
Advanced civilizations (meaning: able to travel great distances through wormholes and the like) on this galaxy might be as old as 1 billion years. It would only take one of these advanced civilizations to move their telescopes to this part of the galaxy and notice a class-M planet that’s able to sustain life.
If they have the means to travel long distances, Earth already makes a good candidate for a planet to visit, simply because from the telescope you CAN see if a planet has oxygen or not. Even if you don’t know if there is life or not in it, it is already a good candidate.
And if we take this further, if the civilization that found us “submits” this finding to a central place in the galaxy, then every other civilization will know too. So, a few different species might be coming every now and then to study us…
Comment by Eugenia — November 29, 2005 @ 9:54 pm
Advanced civilizations (meaning: able to travel great distances through wormholes and the like) on this galaxy might be as old as 1 billion years. It would only take one of these advanced civilizations to move their telescopes to this part of the galaxy and notice a class-M planet that’s able to sustain life.
Uhm, so I thought we were talking real science as we know it, but we’re talking Star Trek instead :) That’s fine for me, let’s just keep the distinction clear.
Just to dot the ‘i’s from a scientific point of view:
1) ‘wormholes’ or more correctly Einstein-Rosen bridges are at the current state of physics an intriguing possibility offered by general relativity, and topologically connect two distant parts of space-time. The catch is that they do so through a black-hole at each extremity. That means that if you send a light signal or a massive body like a spaceship inside, it can’t come out again.
Exotic speculations about viable wormholes include ‘white holes’ and tachyons, but that’s just it at the moment: exotic speculation. No solid theory, much less any evidence.
2) you can say alot about planets’ atmosphere from spectroscopy, even from great distances. But oxygen !== life, at all. Take our own solar system: life could be theoretically sustainable at least on 3 bodies (earth, mars and titan). But we’ve not found life on mars nor titan yet. We might with further exploration, of course. But the fact is that we observed at least 50 (and still counting) planetary bodies in other star systems that offer oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere, and not one of them emits radio signals denoting a civilization similar to ours.
The point is that our current models of evolution of star systems lead very often to inner earth-like planets , outer gas giants. On those inner planets at least, life could be common enough… we don’t know for sure. What is _really_ hard is that _radio emitting civilizations_ last enough to communicate at least once with their neighbours before extintion, again because the distances are much bigger than what you can expect a civilization to last. The galaxy might be full of low life, and scattered with civilizations of our own kind, just not close enough to make contact. The SETI project is your friend there.
Going Star Trek (and, btw, ‘class-M’ is a Star Trek term :) ), if a civilization was a billion years old, and if it could use tricks of any sort to move quickly between far regions of the galaxy, yes, they might have observed us. But that’s the same as saying ‘If I had at my service a fairy that could realize all my wishes, I could win the superbowl playing all by my own’. You’re justifying something highly unlikely with something enormously more unlikely. :)
Comment by Kitty — November 30, 2005 @ 9:07 am
>you can say alot about planets’ atmosphere from spectroscopy, even from great distances. But oxygen !== life, at all.
I *never* said that whenever is oxygen to be found there is life. What I said is that there is a *good candidate* for it and that it DOES makes sense to check it out.
>‘wormholes’ or more correctly Einstein-Rosen bridges
Please stop picking on things. I wrote about it because on my reply I created an assumption in order to build my argument. What I wrote was: *advanced civilizations (meaning: able to travel great distances through wormholes and the like)*. It was part of my reply construction to you, not an item to be debated: IF aliens do visit here, they must have a way to come here, and so I simply MENTIONED “wormholes and the LIKE”. I never said that these are THE way to come here, so I don’t understand why do you debate this. I don’t know if it’s wormholes or subspace or something else, I simply mentioned the most “popular” ways in order to build my reply regarding your question: “how can they know we’re right here?”. That’s what I was replying to, nothing else.
In short, telescopes CAN see if a planet has oxygen and that makes it a good CANDIDATE to visit. And from the moment that ONE species visits us — something that could have happened millions of years ago because not all species advance at the same point in time–, then the rest will learn about it too (*assuming* that advanced species have relations between them). So, no, it’s not difficult to “spot” Earth on the map, they had billions of years to do so already. Even if there are billions of planets and stars, there are also billions of years available for many of these species to have even just one of their researchers spotting Earth with their telescope and informing others about the “potential”.
>What is _really_ hard is that _radio emitting civilizations_
This is like trying to find a needle in the haystack. Sorry, radio emitions is not the way to go. SETI is just using our CPU cycles for nothing, IMHO. Telescope-looking is much more efficient that is. Radio emission look-out is the poor man’s alien discovery way, for those who don’t have the means to travel interstellary (like us).
>Going Star Trek (and, btw, ‘class-M’ is a Star Trek term :) ),
I KNOW, but it’s much faster to write this rather than “planet capable of sustaining life”.
> if a civilization was a billion years old,
There is no civilization that can live a billion years. They all eventually DIE. What I was trying to say there is that there is a window of at least 1 billion years for civilizations to grow and die on this very galaxy. Not that the SAME civilization is 1 billion years old, cause that would be stupid, no species can live that long, at least not without seriously evolving to something completely different. But in that window of 1+ billion years (which is the moment the Milky Way gets more “mature” in many ways), many civilizations have lived and died, and it’s VERY possible that at least some of them HAVE spotted this planet on telescope and that SOME of them HAVE visited us (assuming they have the right MEANS to travel that far), just to check this planet out.
Why do I have to spell out everything to get understood? :-(
Comment by Eugenia — November 30, 2005 @ 7:42 pm
But in that window of 1+ billion years (which is the moment the Milky Way gets more “mature” in many ways), many civilizations have lived and died, and it’s VERY possible that at least some of them HAVE spotted this planet on telescope and that SOME of them HAVE visited us (assuming they have the right MEANS to travel that far), just to check this planet out.
You seem to think that it’s very easy to say from afar if a planet can harbor life or not. It’s not, and as I’ve said the galaxy is statistically quite filled with planets similar to the earth. No civilization could just ‘go and check’ each of them, not even limitng itself to their nearest neighbours. That’s the real needle in a haystack. But you can tell at least try to recognize radio-emitting civilizations, and that leads us to…
This is like trying to find a needle in the haystack. Sorry, radio emitions is not the way to go. SETI is just using our CPU cycles for nothing, IMHO. Telescope-looking is much more efficient that is. Radio emission look-out is the poor man’s alien discovery way, for those who don’t have the means to travel interstellary (like us).
I don’t want to pick on useless details, but one thing is pub-talk, another is an informed opinion, and you’re quite simply stating here an opinion with no scientific basis. No offence meant there, but I’ve been studying and working in astrophysics for more than 10 years now so I come from the way-too-serious approach. If you are really interested in the subject, and for example why so many efforts are spent on radiowaves instead than what you call telescope-looking, I’m sure there must be some pretty nice divulgative pieces floating around the web, dating back to Sagan I suppose.
Oh, and google for ” VLBI “, again about radioastronomy.
Have fun.
Comment by Kitty — November 30, 2005 @ 8:24 pm
You can claim whatever you want Kitty. And I claim that I saw a UFO 15 years ago (along with others that night). Could it be an American experiemental aircraft? It could very well be, as a US/NATO base is only 30 khm away from the town I lived in. But it might have been the real deal too. And if it was the real deal, then there is a way to do interstellar travelling without smashing yourself in to a black hole.
Comment by Eugenia — November 30, 2005 @ 8:38 pm
Well, not a specific reply, but more a general one.
My argumentation was more theoretical than it was practical. I was using strict logic and reasoning to make a point– most of the repliers here started using examples, terminology from scifi shows, ifs and buts, and what not. That was not my intention. I was reasoning the same way Descartes was reasoning when he thought up one of the most famous lines in philospohy– je pense, donc je suis (I think, therefore, I am).
Using nothing more than logic and reasoning, and the most common scientific viewpoint on the size of the universe (which, as Kitty pointed out, was a false assumption on my end but that is beside the point), one can proove, rationally, logically, that lifeforms outside of our planet exist (namely, an infinite amount), but that they do not visit earth (namely, because there is an infinite amount of planets more interesting and more valuable).
I still heard no arguments that exposes the flaw in my reasoning.
Comment by Administrator — November 30, 2005 @ 8:45 pm
As for UFOs… If I see a light bobbing somewhere, I do not assume it’s a UFO. I assume it’s something else. And then I forget about the incident.
The more you talk about it, the more important, and therefore the more real, it gets. 15 years is a mighty long time.
After 2 years of Psychology, if there’s one thing I know, it’s that the human mind cannot be trusted. I have read gazillion studies on human recollection, and they all confirm one thing: the human mind is a mess when it comes to recollection. It adds details, removes details, changes stuff around, distorts perception of time, and what not.
That’s the big problem with these so-called UFO encounters and abductee stories. They’re all based on recollections from the human mind, and hence, are not to be trusted. At all. I wouldn’t even trust myself were I to ecnounter a UFO and tell people about it.
Give me real-life proof of a UFO. Film the damn thing. Give me alien bodies. Give me scientific proof of the existence of alien visists to our world. Then, and only then, might I believe you that aliens visit our world.
Not a millisecond sooner.
Comment by Administrator — November 30, 2005 @ 8:53 pm
>I still heard no arguments that exposes the flaw in my reasoning.
Let’s assume two things:
1. Infinite number of alien species exist.
2. SOME of them can do interstellar travel (in our galaxy, not out of it).
To find out if they are visiting Earth, we must first find how many of these species has mastered fast interstellar travel. Without this number at hand, you can’t proof one way or another. Because, let’s say, if there are 1000 species that have interstellar travelling, it would take one of them just a few hundrend years to decide to check out Earth, because Earth is one of the candidates. There might be 50,000 good candidates in the galaxy, but dividing 50,000/1000 shows us that it is possible to be discovered by one of them pretty “fast”.
Of course, the 50,000/1000 are totally random numbers, so we can’t proof anything with it. It could very well be 10000000/5, or even 50/100000, we don’t know.
Comment by Eugenia — November 30, 2005 @ 8:58 pm
You are limiting your hypothesis to only one, namely our, galaxy.
I’m talking about the universe as a whole. That’s a mighty important difference.
Comment by Administrator — November 30, 2005 @ 9:05 pm
>If I see a light bobbing somewhere, I do not assume it’s a UFO. I assume it’s something else.
Thom, don’t take me for a freaking idiot, please. We were 30 meters away from its circular body (with a diameter of about 15 meters), which was hovering about 10 meters in the air, above a house, without making *any* noise.
>the human mind cannot be trusted.
One mind can not be trusted indeed. But 6 can.
>That’s the big problem with these so-called UFO encounters and abductee stories.
I was never abducted, AFAIK. We just had a quick, 1-minute sighting and that’s all. I don’t believe all abduction stories either.
>Give me real-life proof of a UFO. Film the damn thing.
It has been filmed A LOT of times, some of them by national TV crews too (e.g. the Phoenix Lights case in 1997 which sparked the interest of the governor of the Arizona too). Granted, some of them are fabrications, some can be explained otherwise, but some, can not.
Comment by Eugenia — November 30, 2005 @ 9:05 pm
Thom, don’t take me for a freaking idiot, please.
I’m not saying you are an idiot. I’m not being offencive. I’m just pointing out that human recollection, especially not one from 15 years old, is what I consider as scientific proof. I’m sorry.
As I said, I wouldn’t trust myself either.
One mind can not be trusted indeed. But 6 can.
No. Numerous studies have indicated that group recollections are as fallacable as individual recollections. These tests usually consist of having a group of people witness a certain event, and then ask them afterwards what the hell’d happened. They all get some details right, but the most crucial things are always wrong and differ among the individuals of the group (ie. skin color, hair color, clothing colors, and even sex; car color, car brand, type, etc.).
It has been filmed A LOT of times, some of them by national TV crews too (e.g. the Phoenix Lights case in 1997 which sparked the interest of the governor of the Arizona too).
I’m not talking about filming a few lights in the sky, Eugenia. I’m thinking about making a film in such a way that you actually see the damn thing.
Comment by Administrator — November 30, 2005 @ 9:14 pm
>especially not one from 15 years old,
We were 17. And we didn’t do drugs or drink, not my generation at least (small town kids).
>Numerous studies have indicated that group recollections are as fallacable as individual recollections
I am sorry, but we all saw the same thing _exactly_. That was NO hallucination.
As I said before, I am NOT saying that this was aliens. It could be Americans in an experiemental aircraft. But it was REAL.
Comment by Eugenia — November 30, 2005 @ 9:25 pm
Again, I’m not saying it wasn’t real. All I’m saying is that I don’t trust the human mind, due to what I’ve learned at university. That’s all.
We’re now almost getting emotional. That’s not a good thing, and harms the original intention of my post.
Comment by Administrator — November 30, 2005 @ 9:29 pm
I’ve seen UFOs…as in the strict definition: Unidentified Plying Object. It should do look and act like any aircraft I’ve ever seen. It doesn’t mean it was an alient space craft but I couldn’t figure out what it is.
Comment by Chris — December 2, 2005 @ 6:05 pm