Was Lary King from 07/18/08: Debate Over Existence of UFOs
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0807/18/lkl.01.html
The whole show was sort of about proving/debunking. Sounded alot like this thread infact…
This site has the whole show via youtube…
http://aliencasebook.blogspot.com/2008/07/did-ufos-cause-missile-to-misfire-larry.html
If anybody watches it, plz post which of the 4 videos and at what time the footage is shown.
Back when I was a yoot ,nearly every days paper carried stories of UFO sightings. We are talking front page stories. with long articles and in depth discussion and analysis. Then a week or so later the official explanation came. Generally in Michigan they said it was swamp gas. I guess all the swamp gas is gone because there are no sightings any more. At least in the papers.
Bulk Materials Blog by Carl Hoffman: Loam, Gravel, Sand Heres a small archive of UFO from the past. Long before the air force was testing fancy jets.
Another archive showed 4708 newspaper stories stories on UFO s from 1956 to 1960.
Why? They are both factually correct. As long as general and special relativity stand then there is no way to travel faster than light.
All of the other methods postulated allow you to take a shortcut to reduce the distance travelled. At no point is c exceeded. Wormholes travel a shorter distance through a hypothetical hyperspace type dimension and the compression/stretching method (surely there’s a better name than this) reduces the distance to be travelled.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to talk down to you.
I really hope so, given our ingenuity as a species I hope you’re right. Unfortunately I am a cynic and think we’ll probably find an ingenious way of going extinct first.
I accept your criticism of that sentence. I just think it’s extremely unlikely to happen in any reasonable time frame.
In the 70’s and 80’s it was often predicted that we would have moon bases or Mars colonies by the year 2000, now it could be years before we even set foot on the moon again, something we had the technology for decades ago.
Without sufficient impetus to achieve anything we will not do it. I think to a certain extent (am I’m getting a bit off topic here) that we need a way to cooperate on a global scale to reduce the costs and to overcome the challenges. It is my belief that if we stay on this planet we will eventually become extinct. It’s inevitable, even if we can survive another few billion years, the sun won’t.
Maybe impending destruction is the impetus a species needs to rapidly discover interstellar travel.
Ah, OK. I thought that the two sentences were a direct contradiction.
But in fact, you’re saying much the same as I am: that an object with mass cannot exceed (or equal) c, but that doesn’t necessarily rule out other methods which might sidestep the need to travel such long distances.
But, let me just remind you; whether, and how soon, humans develop interstellar travel is not relevant to the topic of this thread.
My point was simply that given the age of the Universe, a hypothetical alien race could be the equivalent of thousands or millions of years ahead of us technologically.
I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to speculate that such a race would eventually have found a practical method of travelling interstellar distances (without exceeding c).
It’s a “gut feeling”, I know, but it’s not all that irrational. Everything should be assumed possible until proven impossible – and if anything has been proven impossible, it’s that an object with mass cannot be accelerated from a speed less than c to c or above – that’s all.
Slightly off-topic, but I do wonder where interstellar transport would fit in a species’ technological evolution.
I can’t help feeling that humans, if we don’t nuke ourselves first, are far more likely to explore a virtual realm first.
That is, I bet we will have the technology to create perfect virtual experiences long before our baby-steps into interstellar exploration. And while virtual worlds may start out as a leisure activity, they could rapidly encompass most people’s lives. Will we bother to try to explore the real Universe?
Ok, very off-topic. Just thinking out loud…
Sorry, I was just using us as an example of why a species may not develop interstellar flight.
Agreed, just a shame they don’t seem to be here yet.
I quite like the idea of being able to manipulate inertia, so that even if we can’t exceed c we can accelerate to it much quicker or “they” can.
Maybe it’s possible to somehow “flip” to the other side of c, some kind of space-time tunnelling into tachyon space. No idea how it could be done, just wildly speculating.
Uh, what?
Relativity is pretty much the epitome of “theory first, observation later.”
Maybe the aliens have a thing called the Prime Directive?
For those fortunate enough to have missed it, Edgar Mitchell (the ET-UFO/psychic healing believing astronaut mentioned at the beginning of this thread) was a guest on Larry King the other night in what might well be the single stupidest episode of Larry King ever- and that is SAYING SOMETHING. Other guests included J.Z. Knight (who channels the 35,000 year old entity Ramtha [who gives advice on everything except how to choose plastic surgeons evidently]) and wacky wacky wacky Dr. Quantum, and they were all there to show how if you can imagine it you can be it. It was… really bad. Transcript
If there were intelligent life in the universe capable of interstellar travel-why should they have any interest in us?
They would already know enough about ignorance, stupidity, and cruelty, from their own historical record/evolution.
Why do we have any interest in studying primitive tribes in the Amazon or South Pacific? Humans will want to study life and culture no matter what form it take. If aliens are anything like the life we know, they will probably be curious too.
I’m tremendously excited by the possibility of finding something akin to a slime mold in the ice of Mars. That answer your question?
With a loophole for those with anal fixations.
Thus answering the old question “Why would anyone travel what seems (to us) impossible distances to look at a planet with a bunch of hairless apes doing nothing interesting?”.
-Joe
2 thoughts:
I think you are incorrectly judging our behavior based on an assumed world view that might be a nice goal, but is probably not realistic to expect evolution to head in that direction. It seems like those traits you listed are side effects of an efficient survival formula. Even the stupidity part, because it’s more efficient to make a quick decision (that could be “wrong” in the sense that the other party wasn’t really a threat) that leans toward survival actions as opposed to waiting for more information and possibly getting killed.
There is a high probability that evolution of life on a different planet would take a different course than what has happened on Earth. Different pressures would emphasize different mental and physical attributes. I would personally be extremely interested in seeing those differences if I were an interstellar traveler (and I assume the aliens visiting us feel the same).
Something I’ve often wondered about is how competitive pressures influence the rate of acquiring abstract thought, logic and whether there is a limit to this process, etc. Would a rapidly changing environment lead to our type of intelligence more often than a slowly changing environment or is it the opposite, etc.
Naturalists spend years in the wild watching other creatures; why should we be any less interesting to a superior intelligence?