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Topic: Alien life before you die: do you have hopes? Post Reply | Post New Topic
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John Byrne

Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132135
Posted: 15 September 2020 at 8:00am | IP Logged | 1 post reply

As I have noted several times before, we only need to look at Kenneth Arnold's original 1947 UFO report to see a big red flag whenever we're told about "flying saucers". Arnold reported "silver boomerang" shaped objects that "flew like saucers", but when the story was pick up by the wire services a copy writer took the "saucer" part and coined "flying saucers" for the headline. Suddenly people started seeing disk shaped objects in the sky. (Even Arnold modified his story, to describe his "boomerangs" as more saucer shaped.)

As flying saucer stories proliferated--as the term itself became generic, in fact, taking over for the more proper UFO--Carl Sagan compared the reports to Arnold's initial description, and wryly commented that it was nice of the aliens to have modified their technology to match a headline created by some anonymous copy writer.

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Carlos Velasco
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 02 August 2019
Location: Spain
Posts: 280
Posted: 15 September 2020 at 10:10am | IP Logged | 2 post reply

Very interesting, JB! I wasn't aware of that.
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John Byrne

Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132135
Posted: 15 September 2020 at 10:23am | IP Logged | 3 post reply

Most people aren’t, Carlos, as most are unaware that the ubiquitous “Grays” were created for a 1970s TV movie of Betty and Barney Hill’s “UFO encounter” book, INTERRUPTED JOURNEY. Much of our current UFO mythology begins there.*

Interestingly, it has been convincingly demonstrated (tho largely ignored) that most, if not all, the “lights in the sky” UFOs are a distinctive form of ball lightning, generated by huge amounts of rock under pressure.

Doubly interesting, it has been shown that close exposure to such electrical discharges can affect the areas of the brain that govern memory and imagination!

__________________

*Actress Demi Moore was born in Roswell, NM, in 1962 and lived there for about 15 years. It was not until long after she left that she first heard of the “incident” there.

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Stevie Thomas
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 153
Posted: 15 September 2020 at 10:53am | IP Logged | 4 post reply

There is a stretch of interstate (I-10) leading into Pensacola which parallels the flightpath for planes landing at the Naval Air Station, and funnily enough, that area is a hotbed of UFO sightings.
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Jeffrey Rice
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 10 September 2011
Location: United States
Posts: 1161
Posted: 16 September 2020 at 8:35am | IP Logged | 5 post reply

Reports of a UFO in the New Jersey skies a few days ago. Turns out it was the Goodyear blimp over MetLife Stadium for the start of fottoball.
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John Byrne

Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132135
Posted: 16 September 2020 at 8:39am | IP Logged | 6 post reply

I’ve often wondered why so many people seem to think the aliens come all this way on a stealth mission, only to turn on their running lights when they get here.
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Jeffrey Rice
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 10 September 2011
Location: United States
Posts: 1161
Posted: 17 September 2020 at 6:07am | IP Logged | 7 post reply


I’ve often wondered why so many people seem to think the aliens come all this way on a stealth mission, only to turn on their running lights when they get here.

____

Yes! Apparently they have the advanced technology to travel the stars, but not to monitor broadcast to determine the leadership, so they just zip around lost and then leave.
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Andrew Bitner
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 01 June 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 7467
Posted: 17 September 2020 at 7:24am | IP Logged | 8 post reply

"Quake in fear, you primitive... oh, hey, you--you advanced your tech a lot since we spotted you through our hyper-advanced telescopes. Yeah, we thought it'd be fun to come down and freak out the primitives but... hey, don't aim those things at us, we're just having some fun!"
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Andrew Bitner
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 01 June 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 7467
Posted: 17 September 2020 at 7:27am | IP Logged | 9 post reply

As for "alien life": Michael Crichton had an interesting table in ANDROMEDA STRAIN (1969) that posits our "first contact" will be with a microorganism. That's the highest probability, with "advanced alien civilization" last on the list with a chance well under a trillionth of a percent (IIRC).

It's possible we will find some kind of life on Mars or Venus, but it won't be more advanced than amoebae (probably) and we likely can't do much with or to it that would be meaningful. An exciting discovery (perhaps) that would not amount to much.
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John Byrne

Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132135
Posted: 17 September 2020 at 9:09am | IP Logged | 10 post reply

Space, as Douglas Adams noted, is BIG. At the speed of light (186,282 mps) even the Sun is nine minutes away. The closest other star, Proxima Centauri, is almost four YEARS away.

Barring some sci-fi miracle—most unlikely—we’re not going to be dropping in on any of our neighbors any time soon. Nor they on us.

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Carlos Velasco
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 02 August 2019
Location: Spain
Posts: 280
Posted: 25 October 2020 at 6:49am | IP Logged | 11 post reply

Things are starting to get interesting:

NASA to announce 'exciting new discovery' about the moon on Monday
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John Byrne

Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132135
Posted: 25 October 2020 at 7:07am | IP Logged | 12 post reply

I’ve been burned too often with NASA’s “exciting discoveries”. Too often they turn out to be things only super nerds would get lathered up about.
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