UFO's Real or Fake

[Katrina]

What do you believe, are UFO's real? fake? from outer space? top secret aircraft? crazy people? weather baloons? something else?

What's your take.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxEcHrsJuoQ
(random youtubes ufo video)

[Split]

unidentified flying objects are real....we have no frickin idea if little green men from Mars are.

[trypticon]

I find this to be good footage. After reading all the responses to it, I watched it again, and feel like I may have to agree that the lightning seems a bit out of place when there does not appear to be very many clouds out. In fact, it seemed to be more cloudy earlier in the film before the rain started. By the time it's raining, he's focusing more closely on the objects in the sky, with the clouds as a panorama around them. Then he pulls back the camera to a closer vantage point to the ground, and we see that there aren't very many clouds out, and there is even a touch of sun which makes the discoloration from the lightning seem strange.

Good footage. It could be genuine.

[Feelmirath]

I'm not so sure about that footage, the 'UFO's just seem too much like they're depicted in films and the like.

I did have to laugh at the person who posted the "OMFG WE MUST ALL GO INTO ZEE SPACE AN SPREAD OUR DNAS NAO" comment though. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_wacko.gif

[KaneKahn]

There is unidentified flying objects. Most of the videos and pictures are hoaxed, though there is some which are so solid there is nothing else it could be. What gets me is spheres (type that in YouTube). Wither UFOs are alien spaceships, government projects, or AI probes only time will tell.

[Randomness]

I'd bet that most of the top-secret aircraft the government has qualify as UFOs, since 99% of the population hasn't got a clue what they are.

[rogue_robot]

I don't believe aliens have attempted to contact us directly, yet. There may have been an accidental crash in Roswell, and things like that, but I wouldn't be surprised if intelligent aliens with the capacity to get to Earth feared us for the often primitive attitudes humans carry (just look at the chaos in the Middle East, etc.) combined with possession of atomic weapons as much as we fear them for the advanced technology that would be needed to get here and the potentially weaponizable derivatives of it.

[Sinue_v2]

UFO's are very real. By it's very definition, all it is, is an unidentified flying object. These things show up all the time - be they by ground observers, aircraft pilots, radar, etc. We don't know what they are - but it is a real phenomena. While I don't think anyone should rule out that they are of alien origin, I wouldn't put too much stock into the idea either until there is some solid proof - because most all of them are probably of terrestrial origin.

As for Aliens themselves - I'm sure they exist, and I'm sure there are alien species with our level of technology or greater out there. I think life is far more common a phenomena than many give it credit for - and as we've seen from the extremeophiles on earth - life, in at least it's most basic forms, can thrive in some of the most hostile of environments. Some survive entirely without the aid of sunlight, finding alternate energy sources deep within the Earth.

If I had to make a bet - I would say that the first non-human intelligence that Humans will come in contact with with be of our own creation - be it AI, genetically enhanced animals, or Neanderthals revived. And the first alien life forms which humanity will come in contact with, will likely be microbial. In fact, they're likely already living among us right now unknown to us.

And, to a certain degree, we've already invaded another planet. When I was younger, I used to despise the idea of Panspermia. However, recent critisims at NASA over insufficent sterilization of their equiptment has given rise to the idea that we may have already sent bacteria to Mars aboard our rovers. If there is not already native bacterial life, there's a small chance that the bacteria we sent there will survive and spread. In 3.2 billion years (roughly the amount of time it took cellular life to give rise to complex organisms like us) we may find that we have started a genesis of life on that planet.

[HUnewearl_Meira]

Split made the key semantical point-- Yes. There are quite a few flying objects out there that are simply unidentified, but that doesn't mean that they're alien craft. It simply means that we don't know what the fuck they are. As for this video, here's a comment that I find to be rather important to identifying its authenticity:



floadsam (1 month ago)
of all the ufo vids I've seen this is REAL!
WHY???I'm a brit and I know by the reaction and comments of the person(S).If this is a fake pls let me know because I can spend the rest of my life watching porn.

wiltybeast (1 month ago)
It is. Start watching porn mate. x Nick


An idiot says that if it's fake, he'll spend the rest of his life watching porn. The poster of the video tells him to start watching porn.

My thought on this is that it's a fake sky, projected onto a very high ceiling. If so, then the "UFOs" that we see are quite apparently just hanging light fixtures, which explains, first of all, why they don't move, second, why they're lined up so neatly, and last but not least, why some of them glow brightly, and others, not at all. If I had to guess *where*, I would bet on it being in Las Vegas.

[Weeaboolits]

I've seen objects fly and I didn't know what they were, but they existed, seeing as they were both flying and unidentified, I suppose one could call them unidentified flying objects, and since they existed, I guess UFOs are real. ;o

[Zorafim]

Now, if aliens did visit our planet, wouldn't they be gone by now if they didn't want to be seen? And if they did, shouldn't we have seen them by now?
I seriously doubt that we have cow stealers in our midst, since any reason for them coming would be known almost immediately. If they wanted contact with intelligent life, they'd do the only natural thing and communicate with us. If they wanted our chunk of rock, we'd be dead by now. If they wanted information on how we came to be, we'd be driving by reptilian archaeologists on our way to work every day.

UFOs, by themselves, maybe. Spies from other countries, random flying debree, or secret test vehicles from our own nation. I can see it happening, though either way I doubt it'll have an impact on us.


Now, where did I put that site of a cow being abducted...

[amtalx]

On 2008-02-03 11:26, Randomness wrote:
I'd bet that most of the top-secret aircraft the government has qualify as UFOs, since 99% of the population hasn't got a clue what they are.



Agreed. People thought F-117As were UFOs during their prototype phase. At the time, the shape of the plane was radical and had never been seen before. So for "Joe UFO Enthusiast" its undeniable proof of little green men.

Conversely, I do believe that there is intelligent sentient life out there. Its incredibly arrogant to think we are the only intelligent life forms in an unfathomably large plane of existence. Have they made contact with earth? ...who knows.

[Wyndham]

UFOs are probably new types of aircraft, but I DO think there are other life forms far away.

[SuperChoco]

I always thought it would be the other way around having humans be the aliens to another planet and taking it over...

As for UFOs, I think they are just test-planes.

[Nitro Vordex]

100% Proof that life exists elsewhere.
The rules of cells. Putting it in a nutshell, all cells must come from another cell. So naturally, you ask where this cell came from. That, my friends, is the wrong question.
The question is, what animal did that cell or group or even species come from?
how could a bunch of cells just turn into say a bug?
Evolution or not, the cells would make noticable changes, over time. Still, it wouldn't make sense for cells to reproduce a bug or anything, or even group together and just make a bug. The way I see it, the animals here weren't born here, they were brought here. For speculation purposes, think of us as an island. Space is a vast ocean, full of different islands, inhabiting this ocean. However, this ocean is so vast, that traveling between it would take lightyears. So, if anything were to leave their "islands", he/she/they/it would most likely die in the process of floating in the "ocean", as it does not have the nutrients to support them. However, one of inhabitants constructed what you might call, for a lack of comparison, a submarine that totally bends or breaks the rules. They traveled in this "God sub"(only to describe it's abilities) and found our island, and decided to populate it.

Now I know this probably goes against many theories, but this is mere speculation.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Nitro_Vordex on 2008-02-06 17:46 ]</font>

[Sinue_v2]

Chicken and the Egg mentality does not equate to 100% proof. We already know that certain compounds and elements found in all life on Earth combine on their own to make amino acids and some of the basic building blocks of life. Although we have not demonstrated the creation of DNA and RNA in the Miller-Urey experiment, Earth was also home to these elements but bereft of life for nearly a billion years - leaving lots of time for the (as of yet) unknown catalyst to occur either on the surface or around deep sea vents.

The only fly in the ointment is, if life is capable of self-genesis - then it should be happening all the time. To the best of my knowledge, this hasn't proven true. Or if it has, it wasn't substantially different than known life. However, we also haven't sequenced the DNA of most of the species on the earth - especially microbial life. So we might well find at some point in the future that some common forms of microbial life have very different DNA structures, or have a similar DNA structure - but show a much shorter lineage.


So, if anything were to leave their "islands", he/she/they/it would most likely die in the process of floating in the "ocean", as it does not have the nutrients to support them.

I'd point once again to the extremaphiles found on earth which can survive, indeed thrive, in some of the harshest environments. From boiling sulphur pools, frozen in arctic ice, to deep within the crust of the earth and completely independent from the Sun and the conventional food chain - instead relying on radiation to fuel the chemical processes.

And if that isn't enough, we've found bacterial samples which have survived re-entry to Earth's atmosphere - albiet at a low altitude. When the shuttle Columbia exploded - it was carrying bacterial samples. When the box containing the samples was recovered, most of the samples had died due to the estimated 175 degree heat of re-entry - but one species, Microbispora, was found thriving. Nasa currently plans to test the idea further by dropping samples from higher up in orbit to see whether or not they can survive.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Sinue_v2 on 2008-02-06 18:33 ]</font>

[Dangerous55]

Weird video. Seems fake to me. Anyone from the UAE know if it rains that much there?

[Zorafim]

Even if you can't believe that life grew by itself, it's not really logical to assume that it was brought by aliens. First off, what were they doing here? Secondly, how were they created? Different aliens going to their planet billions of years before they came here? What made those aliens? Was there even enough time in the universe for their supposed existence to be brought up?

[Sord]

On 2008-02-06 17:26, Nitro_Vordex wrote:
100% Proof that life exists elsewhere.
The rules of cells. Putting it in a nutshell, all cells must come from another cell. So naturally, you ask where this cell came from. That, my friends, is the wrong question.
The question is, what animal did that cell or group or even species come from?
how could a bunch of cells just turn into say a bug?
Evolution or not, the cells would make noticable changes, over time. Still, it wouldn't make sense for cells to reproduce a bug or anything, or even group together and just make a bug. The way I see it, the animals here weren't born here, they were brought here. For speculation purposes, think of us as an island. Space is a vast ocean, full of different islands, inhabiting this ocean. However, this ocean is so vast, that traveling between it would take lightyears. So, if anything were to leave their "islands", he/she/they/it would most likely die in the process of floating in the "ocean", as it does not have the nutrients to support them. However, one of inhabitants constructed what you might call, for a lack of comparison, a submarine that totally bends or breaks the rules. They traveled in this "God sub"(only to describe it's abilities) and found our island, and decided to populate it.


I'm expecting us to be blown up to make room for an interstellar highway anytime now http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_wacko.gif

seriously though. Yeah UFOs exist because UFO alone is rather vague and includes yadda yadda yadda. As per life elsewhere, do I think it exists. Yes. Is it sentient? Possibly. Have they traveled here? I highly doubt it. They would have to have incredibly long life times to get here and still be able to do a reasonable task. The amount of energy getting here (on purpose) would be gigantic. While space is very much made up of, well... space, there is a lot to interfere with things in a vacum. A small celestial body with even minute gravity could alter the trajectory of something greatly over several million light years of travel. If there is any alien life here, it either A. made up of energy or some such, B. came here by complete coincidence somehow, C. some bacteria that maybe survived space on a meteriorite and survived falling into our atmoshpere (though I guess that could fall under B, though in that case I had meant larger lifeforms.)

[Sinue_v2]

You're thinking in terms of current human technology. We've been riding the cusp of Science Fiction for almost a century now, and many of our current day advancements were thought to be complete fantasy not just a hundred years ago, not just fifty years ago... but as little as even 10 years ago. Look at all the advancement that the digital age has brought us - and we stand on the precipice of two more major revolutions - the Nanotech revolution and the Quantum revolution. Each will shake our understanding of the universe and radically modify our daily lives everybit as much as the Industrial revolution or the Digital revolution has.

So I wouldn't rule out cheap, fast, and economical interstellar travel just yet. It may be a great many years in the future before it's even conceptually feasable - but I think it will happen eventually. And if other species out there are older and more technologically advanced than us, then it is possible that they have stumbled upon just such techniques. If we haven't already been visited, it may just be because trying to find us is like trying to find an atom in a hay bale - especially if life is more prevalent in the universe than we currently think. We're simply lost in an infinite ocean of life.

Also, our own search for life in the galaxy might be a bit more complicated. I found this to be particularly interesting. (http://space.newscientist.com/channel/astronomy/cosmology/dn12853-black-holes-may-harbour-their-own-universes.html) It sounds almost like the hypothesis of a burned out hippy on too much acid. The basic idea is that singularities within a blackhole aren't what we thought they were. By applying loop quantum gravity, some scientists have calculated the formation of a Nariai universe - a seperate universe which expands in only one spatial dimension for infinity. However, Nariai universes are unstable - so it would eventually collapse into a de Sitter universe, one which expands in all three spatial dimensions... much like our own.

So two things - the reason the universe seems to be accelerating as it expands may be because we are inhabiting one of these de Sitter universes within a black hole. Since de Sitter universes are capable of having their own Black Holes, we may find universes within the black holes in our own universe.

So if you didn't already feel small enough compaired to the vastness of space, Watch this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWVshkVF0SY) and then imagine and infinite number of universes both up outside of our black hole home and down through the black holes within our universe - each branching off with millions of black holes in each successive universes creating their own universes on towards infinity... and the diversity of life which inhabits all of them.

Not sure how accurate it is to reality - it is interesting to ponder.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Sinue_v2 on 2008-02-06 23:09 ]</font>

[Weeaboolits]

I'm sure there's life elsewhere, if only because the universe is so damn big, that it seems unlikely that this would be the only planet that supports it.

[HUnewearl_Meira]

On 2008-02-06 21:17, Zorafim wrote:
Even if you can't believe that life grew by itself, it's not really logical to assume that it was brought by aliens. First off, what were they doing here? Secondly, how were they created? Different aliens going to their planet billions of years before they came here? What made those aliens? Was there even enough time in the universe for their supposed existence to be brought up?



The concept that life on Earth was delivered, rather than occurring naturally, is really a fairly old idea, and it does make sense. It's only genuine flaw, is the same flaw that all origin theories have-- where did the thing that started us come from?

Personally, I think that there may be some truth to the theory that our race came from elsewhere, many millenniums ago. The truth may very well be an amalgamation of several theories and religions.

The simple fact that must ultimately be accepted, is that however it happened, it quite evidently did, no matter how improbably, as we are now here to futily ponder it.

[astuarlen]

Aliens? Could be we're swimming in them. Who says life must be as we know it? Obviously, people like to anthropomorphize things, from deities to toasters, but it seems to me any life or intelligence "out there" (take a right at the nearest quasar; if you passed truth, you've gone too far) is more likely to be so different from terrestrial organisms as to be undetectable or incomprehensible to us.

Good thread. Crazy speculation is good for your cholesterol levels.

[Dragwind]

As far as technicality goes, yes, that's a UFO. As far as what could be in it, no idea. I do personally believe though that there is other life. Earth in my opinion, can't be the only place where life can exist. Also apparently there are other solar systems identical to ours, so theres no doubt in my mind.

However, I find it odd some people claim that if there IS life somewhere else, they will be smarter than us. I don't get why they say that though, they could be horridly underdeveloped.

Of course, there is also a possibility they could be more advanced, who knows.

[Zorafim]

On 2008-02-07 17:40, HUnewearl_Meira wrote:
Personally, I think that there may be some truth to the theory that our race came from elsewhere, many millenniums ago.



I'm not going to throw the idea out the window, since it could have happened. It's just not a very useful theory. If life really did come from somewhere else, then it's that place that had the billions of years of evolution behind it. Not much different than our case, just much harder to study if it ends up true. And, if we can't find out how that form of life came to be, we'd just simply be one step behind where we are now.

Considering we have everything we need to begin life on pre-paradise earth, we could find a solar system similar to ours, look for a planet with a similar form as ours, and check to see if that planet has what we had eons ago. If all things check, we may find life on that planet, and we may get a trading route between the two of us, given time. Of course, as it turns out, our solar system is extremely weird, so it may be a while before we can get a good match.

If we use the theory that life came from another planet, then we won't know what kind of conditions life grew in. Since we don't know, we don't know what to look for, and we'll never find it. Considering that, we may as well use the Evolution Theory, since that at least gives us a source and just as much information.

[rogue_robot]

On 2008-02-07 20:31, astuarlen wrote:
Aliens? Could be we're swimming in them. Who says life must be as we know it? Obviously, people like to anthropomorphize things, from deities to toasters, but it seems to me any life or intelligence "out there" (take a right at the nearest quasar; if you passed truth, you've gone too far) is more likely to be so different from terrestrial organisms as to be undetectable or incomprehensible to us.

Good thread. Crazy speculation is good for your cholesterol levels.




Actually, science tends to disagree with the notion that extraterrestrial organisms will be that much different than terrestrial ones. Aliens' physiology on a macroscopic level has at least some capacity to appear aberrant, but cellular function on the microscopic level is more of a chemistry than a biology question - and the moment you start thinking of swapping carbon out as the basic element of life, a whole ton of problems arise, typically in respiration, metabolism, and structural strength.