quote:

ORIGINAL: jlf1961

Not to burst anyone's bubble about the whole "we have been visited by aliens" idea, but there are a few very small problems with aliens coming to earth.

Not in any particular order:
1) The speed of light barrier, it would take infinite energy to push a solid mass beyond the speed of light
2) If an alien intelligence solved the problems with physicist Miguel Alcubierre's warp drive metric theory, it would require an energy source that is still the equivalent of the total energy output of a star over its lifetime.
Which of course could mean they have managed to harness one of three forms, anti-matter conversion, dark energy, zero point energy
3) The odds do not favor an altruistic or benign encounter, in other words, an alien species would be more likely to invade, enslave and basically do exactly what humans did in their colonial expansion and empire building phases of civilization.

OR
4) If they were not prone to invasion and conquest, but actually had evolved past that, one brief observation of human society either in the present or over the past few thousand years would be more than enough to put up a "Do not land this species is insane and bloodthirsty" warning on any navigation charts they may use.

quote:

ORIGINAL: jlf1961

Not to burst anyone's bubble about the whole "we have been visited by aliens" idea, but there are a few very small problems with aliens coming to earth.

Not in any particular order:
1) The speed of light barrier, it would take infinite energy to push a solid mass beyond the speed of light
2) If an alien intelligence solved the problems with physicist Miguel Alcubierre's warp drive metric theory, it would require an energy source that is still the equivalent of the total energy output of a star over its lifetime.
Which of course could mean they have managed to harness one of three forms, anti-matter conversion, dark energy, zero point energy
3) The odds do not favor an altruistic or benign encounter, in other words, an alien species would be more likely to invade, enslave and basically do exactly what humans did in their colonial expansion and empire building phases of civilization.

OR
4) If they were not prone to invasion and conquest, but actually had evolved past that, one brief observation of human society either in the present or over the past few thousand years would be more than enough to put up a "Do not land this species is insane and bloodthirsty" warning on any navigation charts they may use.

quote:

ORIGINAL: WhoreMods

Myself, I'm a bit dubious that a bunch of government agencies who couldn't even manage to hush up a president paying somebody to burgle the other party's campaign headquarters or a later president getting his cock sucked in the oval office could successfully keep something this big quiet for over half a century.

quote:

ORIGINAL: WhoreMods
a later president getting his cock sucked in the oval office

quote:

ORIGINAL: igor2003

quote:

ORIGINAL: jlf1961

Not to burst anyone's bubble about the whole "we have been visited by aliens" idea, but there are a few very small problems with aliens coming to earth.

Not in any particular order:
1) The speed of light barrier, it would take infinite energy to push a solid mass beyond the speed of light
2) If an alien intelligence solved the problems with physicist Miguel Alcubierre's warp drive metric theory, it would require an energy source that is still the equivalent of the total energy output of a star over its lifetime.
Which of course could mean they have managed to harness one of three forms, anti-matter conversion, dark energy, zero point energy
3) The odds do not favor an altruistic or benign encounter, in other words, an alien species would be more likely to invade, enslave and basically do exactly what humans did in their colonial expansion and empire building phases of civilization.

OR
4) If they were not prone to invasion and conquest, but actually had evolved past that, one brief observation of human society either in the present or over the past few thousand years would be more than enough to put up a "Do not land this species is insane and bloodthirsty" warning on any navigation charts they may use.

Just a few hundred years ago, using the knowledge, beliefs, and science of the day, it was believed that a man could not live if he traveled faster than a horse could run. If you proclaimed that some day men would walk on the moon or travel several times faster than sound you would have been laughed at, to say the least. Some men were even imprisoned for making even lesser proclamations. Travel hundreds of miles from city to city in a matter of hours in a carriage that was not pulled by horses? Preposterous!

The things you state are very true when seen through the eyes of today's science and knowledge. But look at the difference made in a short, few hundred years, right here on our own planet. If there is other life in the universe, and I think there is, it would be foolish of us to think that we are the most intelligent, or the most advanced. There is no way to determine the wonders that a more intelligent or a more advanced race of beings might be capable of.

Personally, I don't see any reason to think that an alien race is "likely" to be either more or less aggressive or sinister.

Here is a little "fantasy" I dreamed up years ago and often wonder about. 6000 years ago (give or take thousands of years depending on your individual ideas) humanoid aliens visit the earth and find a planet filled with animals of less than human intelligence. So they take some of the more intelligent ones . . . the great apes . . . and genetically alter them . . . . . . . .creating man in their own image. And since then they stop by on their interstellar journeys from time to time to monitor their growth. Maybe we are just an experiment?

Definitely NOT saying I believe it. Just an idea I've toyed with from time to time.

quote:

Which of course could mean they have managed to harness one of three forms, anti-matter conversion, dark energy, zero point energy