[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.