Thoughts on UFO's??

[TracyCoxx]

Originally Posted by violet lightning

Anyone believe in UFO.s? Anyone had a sighting, or perhaps an encounter?
Or maybe you think its complete bullshit....

Complete bullshit.

Although I have seen some very odd lights over Brownsville TX many years ago. It was a illuminated line moving very fast and erratically in the sky. It's a huge leap to go from odd lights in the sky to ALIENS though. I mean, it's not as if we have no way of putting lights in the sky ourselves.

Then, on the scientific side, we've only been producing radio waves that would catch another civilization's attention for the last 60-70 years. So only civilizations within 60-70 light years would even know there's intelligent life here. We've already looked at stars within that distance and none of them are broadcasting anything. I do think there is intelligent life out there though... somewhere. I just don't think they have been here.

Other scientific points... It takes an enormous amount of energy to travel near the speed of light. And because of relativity, the space travelers would return to their planet 10s of thousands, maybe even millions of years in their future. What would it be worth to that civilization to send a crew to investigate our planet if they would not reap any benefits from that mission for thousands to millions of years later?

And I know the old argument... just because we haven't found a way to go faster than the speed of light doesn't mean an advanced civilization can't figure it out. I'm a physicist though, and the speed of light is most definitely the speed limit. We have witnessed some of the most energetic events in the universe... galaxies colliding, supernova, gamma ray bursts from the edge of the universe that put out as much energy as a million suns would in their entire life every second. Nothing has been seen to break the speed of light.

[Jenae LaTorque]

Maybe, maybe not. As we all know, Einstein's theories are starting to show a few cracks, and what about inter-dimensional travel, worm holes, etc.? You know at one time, a fast horse was considered the maximum speed attainable.

[TracyCoxx]

Originally Posted by Jenae LaTorque

Maybe, maybe not. As we all know, Einstein's theories are starting to show a few cracks, and what about inter-dimensional travel, worm holes, etc.? You know at one time, a fast horse was considered the maximum speed attainable.

A fast horse may have been thought of as the fastest people could travel on, but we knew of speed limits that were faster. This isn't like breaking the sound barrier, which was an engineering problem. The speed of light is a physical limit. If you go faster your mass will be imaginary (as in square root of negative one kind of imaginary). It's just not mathematically possible.

Yes, they could use a worm hole which would theoretically completely bypass space between here and there. But there aren't any wormholes that open up around here. It would look like either a black hole (detectable) or a theoretical white hole (very detectable). One could be constructed, but they would have to either construct one, and bring one end here (again at a speed not greater than light) or come here (again at a speed not greater than light) and somehow cause one end to open up here.

If the cracks you're talking about in general relativity are about it being incompatible with quantum mechanics, that comes into play at subatomic distances or around the time of the big bang. If there's other cracks you know of I'd be interested to know about it.

[Jenae LaTorque]

What's your say on the other dimensions?

[TracyCoxx]

Originally Posted by Jenae LaTorque

What's your say on the other dimensions?

The shortest path between 2 points is a straight line. Traveling via other dimensions would be further.

Besides, there are 3 spatial dimensions, 1 time dimension, and probably quite a few smaller dimensions. The smaller ones are on the order of 10^-35 meters long or smaller. Good for making forces, but useless for travel. If they were large enough to travel along we would see them, and they would also play a major role in physics and we would know about them.

Hot avatar BTW

[ARIES666]

Wow, Tracy....you certainly are more than "just another pretty face"....I am impressed! Maybe Art Bell should have you on his show some night!

[violet lightning]

One of my favorite quotes is "The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, its stranger than we CAN imagine."

Excellent discussion!

Who knows what, if anything is out there, (intelligent life) and if so, what they know about physics, galactic travel, and such may be light years ahead of us.

But I also believe its possible that Earth is so far out in the boondocks of the galaxy, that we may be an undiscovered hick planet. Might be better that way too.

Brownsville, eh. I used to fly in there every so often when I was a private pilot. I've seen some nightime lights (like satellites) do some strange things, like stop on a dime and instantly disappear. I have no idea what it was, but I was looking right at it.

I think there is alot of sophisticated hoaxing going on too. People are funny that way, and quite ingenious. Reminds me of the crop circles phenomena.

One of the things I liked about Red Dwarf ,MIB and Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy, is they all brought up size and scale. Like a whole fleet of terrible alien spaceships bent on destroying Earth being accidentally swallowed whole by a yawning dog! Who is to say aliens couldn't be (to us) microscopic, or so vast, we can't even see the whole.
We still don't even know what the "Universe" is exactly, or whats beyond it, or what started it. (I'm a layman, but the Big Bang theory deals with what started the universe, not what came before dosn't it?)

[TracyCoxx]

Originally Posted by ARIES666

Wow, Tracy....you certainly are more than "just another pretty face"....I am impressed! Maybe Art Bell should have you on his show some night!

Thank you But I doubt Art Bell is interested in real science.

[Breezy]

Originally Posted by Jenae LaTorque

Maybe, maybe not. As we all know, Einstein's theories are starting to show a few cracks, and what about inter-dimensional travel, worm holes, etc.? You know at one time, a fast horse was considered the maximum speed attainable.

oh really? how do u figure? call me ignorant, but last time i checked a theory was a hypothesis that has been PROVEN accurate by multiple scientists. Thats like saying that 1+1 does not always equal 2... just doesnt work like that. I'm just assuming that you were refering to his theory of relativity.

oh and btw, in this time you speak of- where a fast horse was considered to be the maximum speed attainable- that was the maximum speed they could attain with their technology(or lack of). So are u insinuating that one may be able to travel faster than the speed of light, in the future? haha, do u some research.

worm-holes, black holes, and inter dimensional travel; Einstein believed in those, and have been proven to be very real. Maybe you should look into Quatum Mechanics a bit become making outlandish claims like that.

[violet lightning]

:D I think we're mostly talking in generalities and possibilities.
Is there a unified field theory yet? Seems like there were and are a few things that Einstein. Hawkings and others have yet to explain or prove, so maybe the door is open to things you or others haven't thought about or developed yet.
(a hypothesis has been proven, but does that mean it can't be further developed or interpreted, or new aspects of it discovered? )
To me, its an exciting time, and we are on the threshold of many new discoveries. String theory, quantum mechanics, biogenetics, just to name a few...
Also, if interdimensional travel is possible, wouldn't that negate the need to travel faster than light?

[Jenae LaTorque]

All I am is saying is that to state something like FTL travel is impossible is simply silly. All we know for certain is that we can't do it now at this point in time. We do not know what is possible in the future. History is full of respected scientists stating that so and so is not possible, an lo and behold, not so many years later, they had egg on their face. 200 years ago, who would have imagined that someday a person would be able to have a conversation with someone on the other side of the planet or for that matter, on the moon. So what I am saying is;

"Nothings impossible, we just can't do it right now"

[TracyCoxx]

Originally Posted by Jenae LaTorque

All I am is saying is that to state something like FTL travel is impossible is simply silly.

Why would you say it's simply silly? I mean, it's not as if there aren't some pretty damn convincing equations saying it's impossible. It's not as if there haven't been extremely accurate experiments testing this claim. It's not as if there haven't been some extremely energetic events like gamma ray bursts, black holes and supernovas that all are limited by the speed of light.

You might say that scientists in the past have been proven wrong, but then you'd be ignoring the enormous progress we've made over the past 100 years. An analogy would be like suggesting that there could still be cheese on the moon since scientists 100 years ago have had theories about the moon that have been proven wrong. Yes we've been to the moon now and haven't seen any cheese, but we've only been 6 times. Who's to say we know all there is to know about the moon? Who's to say there isn't cheese there that we don't know about? To say with certainty that there isn't any cheese there is just silly.