E.T. has returned?

I voted that we're alone. Let me tell you why.

My mother always had a garden when I was growing up. I've always loved to garden. I'm not sure where I first heard the adage "nature abhors a vacuum", but if you want proof of it, just look at any garden. Plenty of sun and water, good black soil and fertilizer, and you'll be weeding at least an hour a day. Life can't help but spread to unoccupied territory. Nature abhors a vacuum.

The Party Line is that the universe is somewhere around 15 to 18 billion years old. First generation star systems wouldn't have enough heavy metals to get life going, but the second generation stars would. So, the potential for life has been around for at least 12+ billion years. And using the same example of the garden, once it started it would spread everywhere.

Now I'm going to make another assumption here - that desirable real estate in the galaxy are few and far between. Just look at our solar system - dead worlds and satellites everywhere you look, except for our Earth. Any intelligent passing life wouldn't be likely to pass this world by. And if they were to stop and set up shop, we'd be able to put up as much of a fight as an anthill would to stop a new strip mall from going up. That is if they showed up today. But why wouldn't they have showed up hundreds of millions or billions of years ago? The very fact that we're here leads me to believe that the galaxy is a lonely place indeed.

One of the world's largest Star Trek conventions is currently in progress. It's creator, Gene Roddenbury, conceived a project in which intelligent beings from different solar systems joined forces to conduct scientific excursions to 'new worlds' just to see what is out there. The policy was to be peaceful as much as possible and always non-intrusive or coercive. (It was always rather remarkable that people beaming on and off the planet didn't seem to bother indigenous populations even less advanced than Earth, but then each episode was only so long.)

As I do not believe great ideas or thoughts need to be exclusive, I think it quite possible that Roddenbury's vision is actually plausible in a general way. Would it not be possible that E.T. explorers who wandered into our galaxy would have the same policies as the Starship Enterprise? Could they not simply be observing us with a hands off policy not to interfere with us?

Admittedly, with the advanced technology they would have, they could certainly destroy us. Therefore if they've been around for as long as they have been 'spotted' and reported, it would reasonably follow they intend us no harm.

Maybe interstellar travel is very difficult. For instance the nearest solar system to us is 25 trillion miles away. This is on a totally different scale from the distances between the planets.

Just to throw around some fantasy number, what if only 1 in 1000 worlds has intelligent life, 1 in every 100,000 has a technological civilization, and 1 in every 100,000,000 has a civilization capable of travelling interstellar distances. And then, how often would we get visited?


P.S.: You forgot to add an option, for "We're not alone in the universe, and we'll probably meet them eventually, but they are not visiting us."

I put my spare computer time where my mouth is. I don't know about advanced alien intelligence, but I'd like to find out.


http://www.kerman94.net/Marriage.HTM

Forgot the download instructions:

http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/download.html

It has always been my opinion that it is more fun to belive in ET than not to. But I do not expect a space ship in my back yard any time soon.

I voted for 'We're alone in the universe'. Why? Makes it all a bigger surprise when they DO show up :wink:

But seriously: you can speculate, but eventually I do not believe we have any firm proof that we have encountered ANY life. Maybe there is life in the universe, could be. But intelligent life? Nah.

With a couple of hundred billion stars in this galaxy and hundreds of billions of galaxies, you figure we're the one and only, huh?

I can say as much about it as I can predict what I'm gonna eat for breakfast on the 14th of January 2037. Actually I would vote for an option like 'I don't know'. However, I'm here to be convinced. I'm not this kind of dreamer. Numbers don't mean anything in this context (in my opinion).

I believe there are enough planets out there that some ought to have life. More than a few should harbor intelligent beings. But, we may never meet any. It just doesn't seem feasable that two species could find or reach each other across the vastness. Science could prove me wrong, but not likely in my lifetime.

You're right about the numbers, Rick, if you mean it is hard to trust statistics on what may be a unique circumstance.

Roswell. Well, it looks like quite a coverup from all I've heard. Why go to the trouble of covering up something that didn't happen?

I do expect there to be other life in the universe, but don't know whether we should be expecting to discover it, or it, us. Just speed of light limitations keep us from receiving anything but ancient news.

If anyone can find a means of propulsion to get himself close to the speed of light, he can travel quite far in an amount of time that seems short to him, although when he arrives at his destination he will only bear ancient news. However, since the speed of light is about 670 million miles per hour, this is pretty difficult to achieve.

Don't you ever really hope somebody has achieved it though? That it is possible? That we are not consigned to live on Planet Earth until it is sucked into the sun?

Does everbody think all the 'evidence' of E.T.'s compiled via eye witness accounts, photographs, video, radar anomalies, etc. have been debunked? Or are enough sufficiently explained to at least keep the question open?

Read this more than 40 years ago in a pulp sf magazine--and of course, don't remember the author. Still...

Across the void I heard a thrum
Of echoes in an interplay.
As if some being tapped a drum,
In muted rhythms, worlds away.

And though I could not understand
The message that the drumming brought
Or who controlled the drumming hand
I clutched the truth the drummer taught:

That in this universe unknown,
The race of man was not alone.

I have yet to see credible evidence that aliens have set foot on this planet. As I've said, I don't think they could. The thing about Roswel, it was thirty years after the supposed event before the alien story became full blown, if I recall it correctly.

It is fun to suppose the movie Men in Black is a documentary. After you delete a few improbable details as hollywood embellishment, the hypothesis is about as believable as some of quantum theory, the big Bang and several other things some very advanced mathematicians consider proved beyond reasonable doubt. My math does not go much beyond college algebra, so I am doomed to consider one as probable as the other unless I wish to regard a dozen mathematicians more reliable than a million ET eye witnesses. The bottom line is there is little we can prove or disprove, personally, so our tentative conclusions are acts of faith, on weapons of mass destruction, ET and nearly everything else. Neil

btw I find it interesting that many years ago when Goddard was doing his rocket experiments he had to leave the east cost as it was too crowded. He went west and set up a labortory in Roswell New Mexico

Goddard died in 1945, however, prior to the alleged alien spacecraft crash, and his rocket reserach in Roswell ended many years prior to that. He of course is one of the local historical figures featured in Roswell museums.

Paul B. Thompson
http://www.parascope.com/nb/1096/metal.htm

Another piece of Roswell evidence has bitten the dust.

For the past several months UFO researchers and journalists have been following the case of yet another purported piece of Roswell evidence, the so-called recovery fragment much discussed on Art Bell's radio program and on the Internet. According to the story attached to the strange metal object, the fragment was pocketed by a member of the Army team that cleaned up the site of the 1947 Roswell crash.