Aliens.... do they exist?

[geo]

If we exist, surely something else must.

Do they exist?

Why do they do 'surgeries'?

Do they mutilate cattle?

Do they fly around in spaceships or do they send drones to scope us out?

Are they sent from their own government or are they just vacationers or poachers?

Why are they grey?

Will we ever hear radio communication from them?

Will math be a universal language to bridge us and them?

Are they from outer space or us from the future after we've bred ourselves grey cuz its cool?

Do weather balloons look like flying saucers?

Why is it always a saucer and not a Borg Cube or a cloud shaped like a bunny?

Do they breathe CO2 and emit syonide gas?

[Doominator2]

geo said:

Why are they grey?

[Kontra Kommando]

I believe in life on other planets. However, I don't think intelligent-life from another planet has ever visited Earth.

There is a theory that life on Earth was started by tardigrads, that came from outer-space.

Interesting video, I just wish it wasn't narrated by this snarky hipster-nerd.

[Technician]

Don't care. Never did.

[Flesh420]

If you excist they excist. What a waste of space if they didn't. And Hell who knows. We could just be a colony of the human race out there that's waiting for us to get our shit together. We're like children with daddy issues, cough cough: belief in god. Anything goes wrong, you just pray for daddy to come save ya or aliens, all the same.

[scifista42]

Kontra Kommando said:

I believe in life on other planets. However, I don't think intelligent-life from another planet has ever visited Earth.

I believe in life on other planets, the universe's really big after all. I don't deny there might be intelligent life, I don't even deny that they might have visited Earth or will do so. But I don't really believe that any of the UFO fuss within the last 50, 100 years has to do with real aliens.

I like to come up with sci-fi-alike conspirations in my mind though. Aliens might be here and monitoring us. But in that case, I believe they'd be smart and technologically developed enough to not make us see them, anytime, anyhow.

Practically and presumably, I better don't count with real aliens.

[Doom_Dude]

Do they exist?

There's something like 400 billion stars in the Milky Way alone. Of course there's life out there.

Why do they do 'surgeries'?

On Humans? They tag the ones they want to breed for pets and use in their human zoo exhibits.

Do they mutilate cattle?

No, we're the ones that do that. Mmmmm burgers. Tho, they might nip over here to get some beef to feed to the humans they keep as pets.

Do they fly around in spaceships or do they send drones to scope us out?

They fly around in dark matter fueled space trains.

Are they sent from their own government or are they just vacationers or poachers?

None of the above. They're alien teens who steal the parent's space bus and decide to buzz Earth for the lulz.

Why are they grey?

Only the grey ones are grey.

Will we ever hear radio communication from them?

That probably depends on how close we move our receivers to their location.

Will math be a universal language to bridge us and them?

What if we fuck up, get a equation wrong and it starts a war?

Are they from outer space or us from the future after we've bred ourselves grey cuz its cool?

Both maybe.

Do weather balloons look like flying saucers?

No, those tend to look like weather balloons.

Why is it always a saucer and not a Borg Cube or a cloud shaped like a bunny?

Well sometimes it's a big fucking metal cigar shaped ship.

Do they breathe CO2 and emit syonide gas?

I think that's classified.

[Sokoro]

Geo: Majority of those questions are invalid.

[Jaxxoon R]

If there actually were aliens monitoring us and we were aware of them we'd probably constantly try to steal/bum tech from them.

Realistically speaking, it's extremely likely that there's life somewhere else throughout the universe, and quite likely there is intelligent life amongst it, but seeing as the universe is so stupidly huge they'd probably have a pretty hard time getting anywhere of importance if they're anywhere near our technological level.

Alien invasion movies where the aliens were after resources always pissed me off, though. Why go through all the trouble of launching full-on war with a race literally in its home turf (kind of like say, five hunters going after a river full of hippos) when they could easily claim Mars and mine that instead. Or if they want to be assholes they could pull a Despicable Me and just steal the Moon.

[geekmarine]

Yes they exist, and yes they've been probing you. Those "nightmares" weren't dreams at all.

[Gez]

Going from a planet dozens of light-years away to steal resources from Earth would be hilarious.

It'd be like restarting the Apollo missions to mine for oil on the Moon. It doesn't make sense for a number of reasons; and even if it were possible you'd waste a lot more fuel going there than you could bring back.

If aliens can visit Earth, they don't lack resources.


(This is also why Cameron's Avatar doesn't make sense.)

[Deleted_Account]

They're not aliens, they're demons!!!

[baronofheck82]

Do I believe aliens exist? Certainly. Reason being, what's the point of all these planets, stars, and galaxies if our Earth is the only planet in the ENTIRE Cosmos that has life? Way too much real estate going to waste. As another poster said, there's four hundred billion, if not more stars in our galaxy alone - it's just impossible, to my mind, to say we're alone. Just because we haven't officially made contact with an alien civilization doesn't mean they're not out there.

[FireFish]

If they exist, and if they are smart, they would fly around planet earth
with a minimum distance of 1 lightyear thinking ;
'yeah right, as if i want to get nuked or disected.'

[Clonehunter]

Well where do you think the goddamned pyramids came from? Humans? Pheh!

[Philnemba]

I think if life exist on Earth than surely other life exist on other far far away planets...that's my vote for it.

[Creaphis]

Gez said:

(This is also why Cameron's Avatar doesn't make sense.)

Hey, find a vein of unobtainium on Earth and then let's talk.

Though, with current tech, it would be impossible to profit off of a mineral found in another solar system, even at $20 million a pound. Point acknowledged.

[fraggle]

geo said:

If we exist, surely something else must.

Do they exist?

Almost certainly. If life can evolve on Earth then it can evolve on other planets.

Will we ever hear radio communication from them?

Doubtful. I recently attended a talk by Vint Cerf - one of the original designers of the Internet who is now working on designing an Interplanetary Internet. One of the points he brought up was that if we ever send a spacecraft to another star, we'll need an antenna the size of the solar system to receive any messages that come back to us.

Vint's point was that rather than building an actual solar system-sized antenna, the same can potentially be achieved using a network of sensor satellites distributed around the solar system (he wants to start doing this now). But what he said made me realise that what the SETI project has been doing for years - ie. pointing radio telescopes at the sky listening for signals - is probably a complete waste of time.

Will math be a universal language to bridge us and them?

Yes.

I suspect that if we ever do encounter life from other planets it will be like nothing we can imagine. Sci-fi shows like Star Trek tend to show aliens as humanoids with a slightly different forehead or whatever. It won't be like that. All our assumptions about what "life" means are based on the life we observe ourselves on Earth. Those assumptions don't hold for other planets.

I'd also expect that intelligent beings who have evolved on another planet would not think or reason in the same way that humans do, either. Our minds are a product of our evolution. Maths is a universal language, but beyond that, communication would probably be very difficult.

Why do they do 'surgeries'?

Do they mutilate cattle?

Do they fly around in spaceships or do they send drones to scope us out?

Are they sent from their own government or are they just vacationers or poachers?

Why are they grey?

Are they from outer space or us from the future after we've bred ourselves grey cuz its cool?

Do weather balloons look like flying saucers?

Why is it always a saucer and not a Borg Cube or a cloud shaped like a bunny?

Do they breathe CO2 and emit syonide gas?

I don't believe in UFOs and all these questions are just nonsense along those lines. The telling thing for me is that everyone now has smartphones capable of recording high resolution video. If aliens really do visit the Earth occasionally then someone would have shot a picture or video by now.

[Katamori]

I started a proposal for making a Q&A site on Stack Exchange about it. I've got some really really dumb questions sadly.

[FireFish]

Gez said:
(This is also why Cameron's Avatar doesn't make sense.) [/B]

Do not forget we are human, and we find money to be all and everything.
If its worth millions and something claimed to be uncivilized is sitting on it, then it will die or be cast away.

look at the wooden boats barely making it to their destination with a healthy crew wiping out everything eveywhere in ye olden times.

[GreyGhost]

geo said:

Do they exist?

The universe (or even this galaxy for that matter) is too large a place for them to not exist. The question is whether intelligent life is to thinly spread for us to make contact.

Do they mutilate cattle?

Only when the cows refuse to answer questions.

Why are they grey?

Maybe their eyes are tuned to a different visual spectrum? Turn an ultraviolet light on them and see if they fluoresce.

Will we ever hear radio communication from them?

Maybe. Somewhere out there an advanced civilization might be watching our early television broadcasts and trying to decide whether we'd make good pets.

Why is it always a saucer and not a Borg Cube or a cloud shaped like a bunny?

Aerodynamics.

[Waffenak]

Fascinating subject. I think aliens exist just because of immense size of universe there is possibilities for life even if it's not in any now known form. I dont see point using my freetime scouring for proof of their existince until we have prober technology to do it. Now we are just tinkering around. I'm waiting for fast interplanetary spaceflights for better scouring even if doesn't happen in my lifetime.

[Aliotroph?]

Yes, aliens probably exist. The problems of detection and potential communication are interesting.

All that other stuff about UFOs is as consistent as it is (really not very) because people base their interpretation of what they see and believe on things they've already heard. Nobody saw flying saucers and grey aliens before about 1950. Coincidence? No.

It's like how Koreans are all convinced electric fans in enclosed rooms will usually kill you, or how people in the west have near-death experiences that look like Christian lore. Those things aren't consistent across humanity, and neither are flying saucers and greys.

[Magnetick]

Somewhere in the heavens... They are waiting...

[gggmork]

Life is just matter that has gotten into a complex replicating pattern, cumulatively sculpted by evolution. The universe is so... universal, that it might contain things/phenomena that are even more interesting/complicated/amazing than "life" based on something other than replication/evolution that our primate brains haven't or maybe can't consider. Evolution does seem to be the most powerful algorithm to build complex interesting things in our little observable universe I guess. We're probably oblivious to/ignorant of waaaaaaay more than we are knowledgeable of.

[Malinku]

universe is big so there is a 100% chance of other life out there some where other then here.

for all the crazy stuff about saucer driving, probing, things. who cares till they bother you. Right now I view that stuff like a undiscovered bug/whatever in a rain forest. they may or may not be there but I'm not going to be the one to find out.

[Gez]

fraggle said:

I suspect that if we ever do encounter life from other planets it will be like nothing we can imagine. Sci-fi shows like Star Trek tend to show aliens as humanoids with a slightly different forehead or whatever.

There's a good reason why movie aliens are humanoid, it's much easier to find humanoid-shaped actors. Of course now we have CGI, so weird designs are possible, but CGI critters still tend to look kinda bad in movies.

FireFish said:

Do not forget we are human, and we find money to be all and everything.
If its worth millions and something claimed to be uncivilized is sitting on it, then it will die or be cast away.

look at the wooden boats barely making it to their destination with a healthy crew wiping out everything eveywhere in ye olden times.

Yes, but space is not an ocean.

Look, suppose the Atlantic entirely froze solid. A gigantic iceberg stretching from the Americas to Europe and Africa. Would it be possible to walk from Lisbon to New York and back in one's lifetime? Yes, several times.

Now, let's imagine that there is somehow a physical bridge that you can climb/walk along that leads to an exoplanet in Proxima Centauri (the nearest star system, at only 4¼ light years away). How many lifetimes would it take to cross from Earth to it? For reference, a light-year is 9 460 730 472 580 800 metres. That's nine and a half short scale trillion meters. Looking at a random answer on ask.com, we get an answer: it takes about 51 417 013 human lifetimes to walk one light year.

With technological progress, we have been able to greatly increase our travel speed. By a few orders of magnitude, at the cost of burning a rapidly-dwindling supply of fuel, causing long term damage to the environment, and upsetting our weather patterns. The distances in space are still several orders of magnitude larger than our increases vehicle speeds.

Unless we find the magic shortcut of simple, affordable, no-fuss FTL travel as used in countless science fiction stories, we're bound to our rock. If we colonize space, it'll be with generation ships and they'll be a massively-expensive shot in the dark.

[FireFish]

formal request ; do not pull quotes out of their context...

you forget the hypothetical idea here. people where not talking about real life technology already in existance. This is speculation.

A - movies are movies.
if they can fly to planet ? healthy and fast, they do. like in
start trek.

B - Just try to imagine an alien life form so advanced it can do
the star trek thing.

if humanity would have the technology, they would probably do what they do on earth. use untill it is depleted, no reason needed, only money.

[Gez]

FireFish said:

formal request ; do not pull quotes out of their context...

If you are talking to me, about your quote in my previous message, I fail to see how it is out of context.

[mrthejoshmon]

Aliens probably do exist in the form of plant life or bacteria.

There also may be actual animals/intelligent species out there, but we will also probably kill those as well.