[WillAdams]

The thing which kills me is that I am still mystified (and outraged) by how in my lifetime we went from:

- I am selling my family farm because I don't want there to be a perception of influence.

to:

- I am keeping all of my companies and property and will be charging the Secret Service which has the duty to protect me room and board.

That said, the whole UFO thing is pretty ridiculous --- it's _hard_ to bring an object which is under power and moving at speeds which allow interstellar travel into our solar system at a relative velocity which allows interaction --- witness ʻOumuamua which despite being "just" a dead chunk of rock was detected and photographed.

[sandworm101]

So many preconceptions. Firstly, what exactly does "speeds with allow interstellar travel" entail? A being that was functionally immortal wouldn't care about travel times. And why assume that interstellar travel is even required? There is no solid reason why extraterrestrials need to huddle around stars. They might live in the void between stars. Heck, there could be millions of truck-sized UFOs dancing around in "our" ort cloud and we wouldn't even notice.

[WillAdams]

See my reply elsethread --- a truck sized enclosure isn't reasonable for life support and so forth.

[sandworm101]

>> truck sized enclosure isn't reasonable for life support and so forth.

Who said anything about life? A machine-intelligence could operate a tiny craft. And even a biological, think brain in a jar, doesn't need that much space. Astronomers cannot find or disprove the existence of Planet X in the ort cloud, an object at least several times the size of earth. An entire civilization could be out there and we wouldn't notice.

[bitcharmer]

Not a strong believer in LGM but I don't like your statement for two reasons:

1) life may take different forms, some of which we probably haven't even dreamt about

2) life is not necessary for inter-stellar probes to exist. In fact it probably makes more sense to make these things entirely artificial

[dahart]

> the whole UFO thing is pretty ridiculous

Wait, which UFO thing are you referring to? Carter never thought it was anything extraterrestrial, he stated that he assumed it was a natural or man-made event. Are you saying it’s strange that some people believe in aliens?

[WillAdams]

I think it's strange to believe that a starship could enter the solar system without being noticed due to the requirements of:

- velocity --- it would need to be moving quickly and would have to decelerate (requires energy) to do more than pass through

- life support/technology requirements and attendant heat signature --- interstellar space is _cold_ and not conducive to either, so requires on-going energy output

- size requirements --- basically, an entire ecological system needs to be moved around --- how many trees does one person require to produce sufficient oxygen for them to breathe? (a quick search has an answer from 1--8)

&c. See Kim Stanley Robinson's recent novel _Aurora_ for a well-researched examination of this.

[adammichaelc]

Are you suggesting American humans have reached the pinnacle of understanding how the Universe works?

With our technology, we could easily avoid being seen by a hunter-gatherer society.

Do you imagine that your society does not have similar blind spots?

How much arrogance there is in the modern Euro-centric world. Because the society has explored beyond what our grandparents believed possible, suddenly we are the pinnacle of the Universe.

[WillAdams]

I'm thinking more about the hard limits of physics.

Consider for example the "one-electron" hypothesis --- a far simpler take on it is that the electron is a fundamental particle and that we are nearing an end-game of understanding sub-atomic physics and realizing Einstein's dream of a grand-unified theory --- the universe doesn't seem to be shaped and formed so as to allow for FTL, so one instead needs to work within the bounds of converting mass to energy.

[v3ss0n]

Watch the tictac UFO cases where topguns, top physics, weapon systems experts cannot explain.

[konstmonst]

I think this post has a lot of preconceptions about life. I bet it wouldn't be biological any more, even our society is moving to digital: AIs , drones. Even if it were, why support the whole body, if supporting the brain is enough? I bet future space space ships won't be piloted by humans because we are sensitive to acceleration, temperature, radiation and are pretty short lived. Also we don't have much redundancy and are not very energy efficent. Just look at the trend with mobile phones.At one point in time we used notes to extend our memory, then digital things like PDAs now phones and watches and at some point it will become an implant in our head, extending us as humans. The human of tomorrow will have little in common with human of today, so you can't judge the form of life will take and its requirementfrom a more advanced civilization.

[dahart]

Sure, that’s fine. Easy for me to agree with, IMO, based on the actual science we have today. I might say I think it’s unlikely that starships can get close without being noticed rather than it’s strange what people believe. I mean, people believe lots and lots and lots of strange things for which there’s no evidence, and most are wrong but every once in a blue moon something strange that nobody knew turns out to be true. I just didn’t follow the juxtaposition of the comment about Carter, then a comment about presidents followed by the UFO ‘thing’ being ridiculous. The article suggests that Carter might also think it’s strange to believe a starship could enter the solar system without being noticed - it isn’t clear what you’re responding to.

[bitcharmer]

I think you heavily overestimate our capabilities to detect (even large objects) entering the solar system. Also, why do you assume there would have to be life present on-board?

[hackerlight]

No reason to think they're biological.

[sokoloff]

It’s also hard to achieve interstellar travel in the first place, so if you grant an alien civilization the ability to harness energy to that degree, it doesn’t seem incomprehensible to grant them the ability to control/harness maneuvering ability to enter our solar system.

(I’m on the side of “we will die out before ever interacting with intelligent alien life”, but I still think it’s non-zero.)

[paulddraper]

> I am still mystified (and outraged) by how in my lifetime we went from

I agree.

This isn't anything new, but I suspect it has to do with a much more fractured sense of national identity, and shared core values.

That engenders a "us vs them", "take what is mine" attitude, from top to bottom.

[v3ss0n]

Watch the nitmitz-tictac UFO case where topguns, top physics, weapon systems experts cannot explain. several high ranking witness there.

[cedws]

In cutthroat capitalism, integrity goes out of the window. The last Prime Minister of the UK had ties to many dodgy organisations and was backed by oil companies. The current Prime Minister is married to a billionaire.