Do you believe there's extraterrestrial life out there?

[Shevek]

One thing I'm pretty sure about is that if extraterrestrials do contact us, it won't be with a landing party like those of European explorers. They would make radio contact first.
We do seem to be getting treated similarly to the way we treat uncontacted tribes - study but don't interfere. There may be several different species coming here for different reasons, but all prohibited from formal contact. Some may be here for anthropology, and others to make entertainment out of our foolishness. There may be some here hoping to get salvage rights if they prevent a nuclear war. Others may be here to make sure we never leave our solar system until our movies are about interplanetary cooperation rather than Star Wars.
I strongly suspect that one thing they have in common is getting through their agricultural phases without letting economic inequality rule society before making it even more dangerous with technology.

 

[Cyber]

In the case of the Roswell crash, it was thought the ship was hit by lightning.

 

[Cyber]

One thing I'm pretty sure about is that if extraterrestrials do contact us, it won't be with a landing party like those of European explorers. They would make radio contact first.
We do seem to be getting treated similarly to the way we treat uncontacted tribes - study but don't interfere. There may be several different species coming here for different reasons, but all prohibited from formal contact. Some may be here for anthropology, and others to make entertainment out of our foolishness. There may be some here hoping to get salvage rights if they prevent a nuclear war. Others may be here to make sure we never leave our solar system until our movies are about interplanetary cooperation rather than Star Wars.
I strongly suspect that one thing they have in common is getting through their agricultural phases without letting economic inequality rule society before making it even more dangerous with technology.

I think we humans are still too primitive to bother making contact, otherwise it would have already happened.

 

[Neonatal RRT]

I think we humans are still too primitive to bother making contact, otherwise it would have already happened.

At least in the broader sense...the mother ship landing and announcing their arrival in the modern world.

I still have a sense that there was an extraterrestrial presence in the ancient world that was documented across the globe. I have a sense they pushed humans forward in terms of religion and the sciences, even government...there's a timeline where there appears to be evidence of primitive human tribes living at the same time as significantly advanced cultures. It seems an easy answer to satisfy some of those archeological and paleological conundrums.

I think they've been observing for millennia.

As far as communication, from what I have learned recently, it would most likely be in the form of shared consciousness or what we call telepathy. Verbal and written language...interpreting dialect, for example, would be far too slow and cumbersome...low bandwidth. Telepathy is about expressing "meaning" and is a universal translator.

 

[Cyber]

At least in the broader sense...the mother ship landing and announcing their arrival in the modern world.

I still have a sense that there was an extraterrestrial presence in the ancient world that was documented across the globe. I have a sense they pushed humans forward in terms of religion and the sciences, even government...there's a timeline where there appears to be evidence of primitive human tribes living at the same time as significantly advanced cultures. It seems an easy answer to satisfy some of those archeological and paleological conundrums.

Animals in a nature/wildlife reserve can live in forest/jungle oblivious to the existence of their human caretakers. But once in a while a plane/drone might fly over taking pictures or scans. And in the middle of the night forest rangers might enter and randomly grab an animal tranquilising it take blood or tissue samples and sometimes collect semen or eggs. the animal wakes up from the effects of the tranquilizer with a hazy recollection of being abducted in the middle of the night. It goes on as if nothing happened.

I think this is plausible for the type of interaction we have with aliens.

 

[Cyber]

As far as communication, from what I have learned recently, it would most likely be in the form of shared consciousness or what we call telepathy. Verbal and written language...interpreting dialect, for example, would be far too slow and cumbersome...low bandwidth. Telepathy is about expressing "meaning" and is a universal translator.

Yes. testimonies from thousands of experiencers suggest telepathy is how aliens communicate. I watched a documentary on the Ariel school UFO incident in Zimbabwe Africa, Hearing multiple 5-10 yr olds say aliens communicated to them without speaking is not something you can coach children that age to fake, especially over an extended period of time with adults.

 

[Captain Jigglypuff]

Yes. I don’t think we’re alone in the universe

 

[Outsider]

The NY Times broke the wall of silence regarding the mystery of UFOs. After that the floodgate of information opened, and now the public sees more and more tapes of UFO encounters

 

[Cyber]

The NY Times broke the wall of silence regarding the mystery of UFOs. After that the floodgate of information opened, and now the public sees more and more tapes of UFO encounters

And they seem convincing. Literally the only defence the US government could possibly give as to why they gaslighted thousands of UAP experiencers and alien abductees over several decades now, is they were/are concerned about the mass hysteria/panic it would create. But most likely a privileged few are holding on to their concealed knowledge as it gives them power and wealth.

 

[Dagan]

Alien disclosure would destroy every major religion / belief system / mythos and probably end a lot of (if not all) wars and conflicts (because most, if not all, of them started expressly because of such differences).

That's the wealth and power industry that would instantly disappear.

 

[Ronald Zeeman]

Latest is AI/Atlas may crash into mars maybe tomorrow this will make it not possible to investigate mars as it will destroy every thing there.

 

[Cyber]

Latest is AI/Atlas may crash into mars maybe tomorrow this will make it not possible to investigate mars as it will destroy every thing there.

Indeed 3I/ATLAS may impact Mars in October

 

[Ronald Zeeman]

Or it may fly by, getting confusing what is going on . If it hits Musk can forget Mars.

 

[Cyber]

^^^ the high level of deviance this object has from a normal comet is starting to pile up. If it does turn out to be a natural object then scientists who are currently scoffing at Harvard's Prof Avi Loeb should at least humbly acknowledge (despite their dogmatic/pragmatic intellectual arrogance) we have a long way to understanding the nature of our universe.

 

[Ronald Zeeman]

Tension will building over the next week.

 

[Ken]

I very strongly believe there is plenty of intelligent life in the universe and probably plenty not all that far away.

However, there is a lot more to that story!

I believe there are a lot of reasons we haven't "communicated" with or found any "intelligent" life yet. And I suspect we may never. Not because it isn't there or is too far away, but because of our "mentality" and our limits of perception. Our Umwelt.

We suffer from a near species wide case of narcissism; believing we are the universal example of "intelligent" life.
We believe that we are intelligent because we have technology. Personally, I do not believe technology is an indicator of intelligence. Technology is just what our species does. However, most of the population of our species does not understand anything about the technology they use. It is a relatively small percentage of our species that actually produced the technology. Few have any idea how their cell phone works, or their TVs, microwave ovens, cars, etc.

We like to believe we have the largest brains with the most neurons of any animals on Earth. We don't.

We automatically assume that any intelligent life in the universe will do what we do since we are intelligent. (narcissism). We assume this even though we have only one example of what we define as "intelligent".

We search the universe for radio waves assuming intelligent life will use radio waves like us. Personally, I would be very surprised if any other intelligent life would use radio.

We like to think we are intelligent because we have language. Personally, I don't think that is a good indicator. I don't even think we have the "best" communications skills. Abstract communication has to be learned. Something that was not easy for me. As a child, I had no problem communicating with other species; sheep, chickens, possums, racoons, skunks, cows, horses, etc. They were all my best friends. Communicating with other humans was very hard for me.

Dolphins can see inside others bodies using their natural echo-location sense like we use ultrasound. They can see internal problems and tell others about it by re-sending the "ultrasound" they "saw". That is a very powerful natural communication, but, we tend to dismiss it and still think dolphins are inferior because they do not have technology or an abstract language like ours. It is never considered that they simply don't need it.

The human, as well as all life on Earth, exists as a result of an incomprehensible number of variables. Thus, "intelligent" life elsewhere in the universe will also be the result of an incomprehensible number of variables. The likelihood of another life being anything like humans are likewise incomprehensibly remote.

I do feel certain other intelligent life exist, however, I realize we humans have a very narrow umwelt. We like to believe we can detect and understand anything we "see", but we don't. I think that is just another element or our narcissism. I feel we are looking with the wrong assumptions and I feel that if we do encounter something incomprehensibly different from us, we probably would not be able to notice.

I believe there are some that have senses that are somewhat different in a way to sense things that others cannot. Still, their umwelt is insufficient to understand those senses. I think that is how beliefs in the occult originate. I do not believe "supernatural" is a thing, but I do believe there is a lot we are unable to understand due to our limited unwelt. I just believe all that is completely natural, just things our umwelt is too limited to understand.

 

[Hypnalis]

In the case of the Roswell crash, it was thought the ship was hit by lightning.

The "Roswell Crash" was an experimental radar reflector being used for something classified enough for it to be confiscated from whoever found it, but not enough that nobody ever talked about it.
It wasn't build to be resilient, because it travelled at ambient wind speed, like a balloon.
A lighting strike would certainly have dropped it, but so would something like mild wind shear.

The mysterious material that didn't stay crumpled was Mylar (quite new at the time) that they got from a toy manufacturer.

Mylar is used in the packages for corn chips etc. here, and continues to uncrumple a random time after being put in the trash. I cut the bags into smallish pieces before trashing them to avoid the surprises /lol.

 

[Cyber]

I believe there are a lot of reasons we haven't "communicated" with or found any "intelligent" life yet. And I suspect we may never. Not because it isn't there or is too far away, but because of our "mentality" and our limits of perception. Our Umwelt.

Hi Ken, Yes, there many reasons. Humans are still largely driven to by base biological needs, Freud called this innate instinctive impulsiveness. we have not evolved to a stage where we open our consciousness to altered states that permit connection to other beings. It's possible individuals may have achieved this altered state but as a species we are yet to be receptive to opening our consciousness (indeed for majority of humans such an idea is considered socially deviant at best and demonic at worst).

 

[Cyber]

The "Roswell Crash" was an experimental radar reflector being used for something classified enough for it to be confiscated from whoever found it, but not enough that nobody ever talked about it.
It wasn't build to be resilient, because it travelled at ambient wind speed, like a balloon.
A lighting strike would certainly have dropped it, but so would something like mild wind shear.

The mysterious material that didn't stay crumpled was Mylar (quite new at the time) that they got from a toy manufacturer.

Mylar is used in the packages for corn chips etc. here, and continues to uncrumple a random time after being put in the trash. I cut the bags into smallish pieces before trashing them to avoid the surprises /lol.

Hi Hypnalis, According to a official report published by the US airforce in 1994 that the material recovered near Roswell in 1947 was debris from a top-secret Project MOGUL, a classified operation to monitor Soviet nuclear tests using high-altitude balloons with acoustic sensors designed for spying. Intelligence Agents Investigate UFOs in Roswell (7 JUL 1947).

there are several anomalies with this report. According to multiple witnesses "child like" bodies were pulled from the wreckage and sent (along with debris) to wright Paterson air force base . the air force actually did not dispute eyewitness reports but claimed what people saw were crash test dummies. this explanation created more questions than answers.
1. why put crash test dummies in a spy balloon?
2. why bring manikins to a hospital
3. why put manikins in hermetically sealed coffins?
4. finally the air force contradict their own history, crash test dummies weren't invented officially till 1952. Roswell happened in 1947.

A second issue is Project Mogul has two other spy balloons (same as Roswell) that fell in farmland in other US states. In both cases the balloons fell intact and were easily identified by local farmers as balloons. Retrieval and recovery involved putting fallen balloons in a single military pickup truck, zero security and no cordoning off farmland with hundreds of soldiers (as done in Roswell). Indeed children were permitted on site and in one crash retrieval a crowd gathered to watch proceedings. this would strongly suggest whatever Roswell was it wasn't a project Mogul spy balloon.

Finally Captain Jesse Marcel was one of the most decorated intelligence officers in the US air force having been involved in dropping nuclear bombs over Hiroshima. His knowledge of aircraft would have exceeded 99% of his fellow air force colleagues in 1947. therefore the idea he would:
1. Mistake a crashed balloon for a flying saucer
2. Mistake mylar made for children's toys for exotic alien materials
Are both highly unlikely.

Jesse Marcel Jr, his son, who also held the debris (and would later become a medical doctor) debunked claims that what he held was aluminium foil or Mylar. the nature of the material (in retaining it's original shape) was unlike anything he had seen before or since.

 

[Dagan]

Not to harp on religions any, but it has to be mentioned for context:

If some god (any of them - pick one) is truly "the one" and created all of the life on this planet (that keeps dying off becoming extinct, so it proves that they weren't necessary in full) and also created us solely because it felt the need (a paradox by the way) to be loved and worshipped so much all of the time, and that whole scenario is the main point..........

What's the point for anything else in the universe at all? Seriously. What's the point? I mean, if that doesn't make it beyond clear that gods and religions are paradox constructs, then nothing does - the majority out there just won't ever figure it out. For anything else to exist (and the amount of existence beyond just here on Earth is abundantly obvious), that alone should wake people up and prevent them from feeling so special and expressly significant and basically selfish that "it must be all about them."

We aren't even as important, if you tried to liken it to we being ants in the ocean. We're far smaller in scale per significance.