UFOs exist, or do they?

[Asura]

I just can't get past the idea that billions of people carry a camera with them every day which, while not always being amazing quality, can capture pretty amazing footage that would eclipse any other point in history, that we're still working with footage like what we saw in the 90s.

I see videos every day of crazy things that happen. A crow using tools. A skateboarder rewiring a plug while slam dunking a basketball. A crazy road rage fight between two blokes in Russia.

If there are aliens, can we seriously not have pretty decent footage of them?

[Cassius_Smoke]

I just can't get past the idea that billions of people carry a camera with them every day which, while not always being amazing quality, can capture pretty amazing footage that would eclipse any other point in history, that we're still working with footage like what we saw in the 90s.

I see videos every day of crazy things that happen. A crow using tools. A skateboarder rewiring a plug while slam dunking a basketball. A crazy road rage fight between two blokes in Russia.

If there are aliens, can we seriously not have pretty decent footage of them?

I think its because people are using camara phones to look at a tiny object 25000ft in the air. Whatever they are it's not like they are landing in Tesco carpark.
There are a few. One recently was from the cockpit of a small 2 person plane and they flew right past it. And the one shot from a drone by the military.

[charlesr]

If any creature has the kit to cross space, they likely don't care about the ants or humans that already live here. They are likely leaving their own planet to find somewhere else to live.

[MartyG]

If they're looking for somewhere else to live, then given the vastness of space, they'd surely pick somewhere closer - if the response to that is "Well perhaps compatible planets are rare", then the chances of aliens visiting Earth are even rarer

[Cassius_Smoke]

Who knows. If it is aliens their reason for being here could be beyond our comprehension. It seems from their elusive behaviour that whatever it is doesn't involve us.

[fishbowlhead]

Why would they bother with us? We’re a selfish greedy species that repeats the same mistakes over and over. We have also f*****d the planet beyond saving.

If another species really did want the planet, they don’t have to wait long and they can save a costly war.

[Protocol Penguin]

Way I see it, let’s think logically – space travel is impossible, space colonisation is impossible; any life which might’ve evolved on another world would never be able to visit us even if it was intelligent enough to develop its own industrial civilisation.

[Cassius_Smoke]

Way I see it, let’s think logically – space travel is impossible, space colonisation is impossible; any life which might’ve evolved on another world would never be able to visit us even if it was intelligent enough to develop its own industrial civilisation.

Impossible based on what? Only our own understanding.
Remember, earth has 365 million years of dinosaurs before intelligent life evolved. What if another planet has been around the same time or longer, but only had intelligent life evolve. They'd be hundreds of millions of years ahead of us. Who know what technology they have.

[Asura]

Impossible based on what? Only our own understanding.
Remember, earth has 365 million years of dinosaurs before intelligent life evolved. What if another planet has been around the same time or longer, but only had intelligent life evolve. They'd be hundreds of millions of years ahead of us. Who know what technology they have.

This is a great illustration of the point, though.

We've reached a point where we understand quite a lot about the universe and how reality seems to work; but we've also encountered limitations which, right now, nothing observable seems to break, such as the laws of thermodynamics, or the speed of light as a cosmological constant. All current thinking suggests that super-liminal travel is literally impossible.

Now of course, who knows what future technology will bring; but it's fair to say that any way to travel faster than light involves something of which it is difficult for us to conceive of, right now. It's got to involve bridging the gap by crossing higher spatial dimensions, or warping the fabric of space-time in the manner of gravity to create wormholes, or similar such lofty ideas.

Personally, when I see the supposed "UFO" footage, with those objects that are weird shapes and move at strange speeds, I sometimes think of Sagan's "flat-land" demonstration of what a 3D life-form might look like, if observed by a 2D life-form.

[Protocol Penguin]

Impossible based on what? Only our own understanding.
Remember, earth has 365 million years of dinosaurs before intelligent life evolved. What if another planet has been around the same time or longer, but only had intelligent life evolve. They'd be hundreds of millions of years ahead of us. Who know what technology they have.

Well, FTL travel is impossible based on everything we know about physics. And no FTL travel means no visiting other, distant solar systems. Even travelling within a solar system is an immensely difficult endeavour – if an advanced civilisation manages to reach other planets in their own solar system, they’ll find it doesn’t have the atmosphere or gravity of their native world, and thus unsuitable for life (which is why even if humans land on Mars one day, they’ll never be a sustainable colony on the red planet).

[MartyG]

All current thinking suggests that super-liminal travel is literally impossible.

That's not entirely true - there are theoretical models of warping spacetime that fit within Einstien's general relativity, it's just it requires more mass than is available in the visible universe.

If aliens were warping spacetime though, we should be able to detect it.

I would recommend giving Isaac Arthur's channel a watch. He covers a lot of theoretical science (and sometimes bounding into Science Fiction) around potential advanced civilisations and technologies, and what they may entail, as well as things such as the great barrier/Fermi paradox, terraforming, etc. Some good and interesting stuff there.

[fishbowlhead]

That's not entirely true - there are theoretical models of warping spacetime that fit within Einstien's general relativity, it's just it requires more mass than is available in the visible universe.

If aliens were warping spacetime though, we should be able to detect it.

I would recommend giving Isaac Arthur's channel a watch. He covers a lot of theoretical science (and sometimes bounding into Science Fiction) around potential advanced civilisations and technologies, and what they may entail, as well as things such as the great barrier/Fermi paradox, terraforming, etc. Some good and interesting stuff there.

Lets face it we as a species have only just discovered physics relatively, and only just got 2 space craft out the heliosphere (hobbling out in truth). If a species has become old enough to travel around a galaxy with ease, they would be able to hide it just as easily.

[MartyG]

Why would they bother to hide it? If you're going to warp spacetime, it's going to create a ripple - throw a stone in a lake and try stopping all the waves - waste of effort.

[Cassius_Smoke]

Who's to say they didn't set off across the galaxy 100 million years ago and just slowly traveled here for eons? Who knows how long they live for, or if they are even beings at this point. They could be organic robots that live forever.
At this point anything is possible.

[MartyG]

Your man Grusch claims they have alien bodies.