Amedeus - I think mrblue92 meant that when Scylla says “we have a pretty good idea of how the solution must go”, the “we” may not include Scylla, mrblue92, or most of the people posting in this thread.
I know if someone gave me a blackboard and said “prove that a[sup]n[/sup] + b[sup]n[/sup] = c[sup]n[/sup] has no solutions for a,b,c being non-zero integers and n being an integer > 2”, I would tell them “You’re talking to the wrong guy, please look up Andrew Wiles.”
Scylla, I thought your list of questions was a good start. I built liberally upon your idea in my situation b) above. I did notice that you said " Like the Fermat’s last therorem question, we know the answer, we have a pretty good idea of the broad strokes of how the solution must go, a superior technology will fill in the blanks in a manner that we will find testable." As far as Fermat’s last theorem goes, we know how ONE proof is derived. There might be many different ways of proving it. Of course, if the being knows of a different proof, that would be even better evidence that it is from a different world.
If a physical alien wanted to prove to us that he really was an alien, I’d imagine that would be pretty easy. Imagine if we visited a planet populated by beings very different to, and much less advanced than us. What better proof than “Look - two arms” or “Hey, my head is on top of my body” or even “Look at my magical box which shows moving pictures”. That would be pretty convincing.
Not sure about the psychic channeled aliens though.
Again, the presumption that we will necessarily be able to predict alien logic. If different people have different ideas of what is sufficient for (informal) proof, why can’t aliens have the same problem? Maybe “proof” in an alien’s mind would be the recounting of his life story, which, in his mind, would obviously be so completely different from ours that we should be able to tell that he’s alien. I might not find that convincing–he could just be very creative (or an avid sci-fi reader).
Re-read my post. I know it’s been solved (I even have book on it). My point was that we really don’t know how interstellar travel will be accomplished–there’s just lots of fanciful ideas. Nobody knows if one, some, all, or none of them will even come close to working in a practical sense. IMHO, the comparison is invalid.
That’s a pretty bold statement when you consider what we’re talking about. (I wonder how many Physicists would agree with you.) What if the alien said he travelled through space by manipulating the massless, energyless particles that create time. The scientific community would likely give a collective, “What?” and would have to try to figure out what these particles were. Or would we just dismiss the idea because it is so unexpected and would rather believe the claim was fraudulent?
“The universe is what we say it is.” - James Burke