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Life on other planets is a virtual certainty, given 100,000,000,000 stars in each of 100,000,000,000 galaxies. We certainly can't think we are the only ones - that would be a ridiculous notion. But as for visitors from space - we know that to be essentially impossible. There is no chance of visitors from our solar system - the other planets are completely devoid of higher life - and the unbelievable distances between stars mean that no living creatures could make the journey between them. So UFOs will have to remain U.

As for the moon landings. I'm convinced. But then I make regular use of the equipment they placed there. The conspiracy theorists do depress me sometimes. I just wish that if they don't believe that we did all this wonderful stuff, they would stop reaping the benefits of it. The two-facedness of it irritates me greatly.
 
DonP said:
Life on other planets is a virtual certainty, given 100,000,000,000 stars in each of 100,000,000,000 galaxies. We certainly can't think we are the only ones - that would be a ridiculous notion. But as for visitors from space - we know that to be essentially impossible. There is no chance of visitors from our solar system - the other planets are completely devoid of higher life - and the unbelievable distances between stars mean that no living creatures could make the journey between them. So UFOs will have to remain U.

As for the moon landings. I'm convinced. But then I make regular use of the equipment they placed there. The conspiracy theorists do depress me sometimes. I just wish that if they don't believe that we did all this wonderful stuff, they would stop reaping the benefits of it. The two-facedness of it irritates me greatly.
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What equipment do you use that they placed on the moon?
 
DonP said:
I use the reflectors to calibrate distance-measuring lasers (see an episode of TBBT). They regularly confirm the 40mm per year regression of the moon from the earth.We can measure earth-moon distances to millimetre accuracy thanks to those reflectors and modern maths.
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So how long will it take for it to break free from its orbit?
 
Gahr said:
So how long will it take for it to break free from its orbit?
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It won't. The rate of drift is slowing down and with it the spin of the earth. Eventually the earth will spin at the same rate as the moon revolves and both earth and moon will show the same face to each other. At that point the drift will stop.

That won't actually happen though. The sun will have become a red giant long before that and we will be below its surface.
 
DonP said:
Life on other planets is a virtual certainty, given 100,000,000,000 stars in each of 100,000,000,000 galaxies. We certainly can't think we are the only ones - that would be a ridiculous notion. But as for visitors from space - we know that to be essentially impossible. There is no chance of visitors from our solar system - the other planets are completely devoid of higher life - and the unbelievable distances between stars mean that no living creatures could make the journey between them. So UFOs will have to remain U.

As for the moon landings. I'm convinced. But then I make regular use of the equipment they placed there. The conspiracy theorists do depress me sometimes. I just wish that if they don't believe that we did all this wonderful stuff, they would stop reaping the benefits of it. The two-facedness of it irritates me greatly.
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Don, as an engineer, i believe that distance travel may some day be possible. Our collective technical knowledge is maybe 200 years old. Imagine asking some one in the 15th century about flying or going to the moon and you'd be be put in an asylum. The speed of light is a boundary that has not been exceeded; but why? Heck the speed of sound was thought to be a boundary. Give us another 1000 years and Star Trek stuff might really happen. Heck, I already have communicators (cell phones), meals in 2 minutes (microwaves), and wall size displays (100 inch LED TVs).
 
Don O said:
Don, as an engineer, i believe that distance travel may some day be possible. Our collective technical knowledge is maybe 200 years old. Imagine asking some one in the 15th century about flying or going to the moon and you'd be be put in an asylum. The speed of light is a boundary that has not been exceeded; but why? Heck the speed of sound was thought to be a boundary. Give us another 1000 years and Star Trek stuff might really happen. Heck, I already have communicators (cell phones), meals in 2 minutes (microwaves), and wall size displays (100 inch LED TVs).
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That's a nice wish, but I don't think it will be more than that. And think of this. If you had just expended a dozen supernovas worth of energy moving your spacecraft to another star, would you just skim around the atmosphere of a planet full of sentient creatures and scare a few nut jobs? No, I think you would need something a little more positive to present to the mission sponsors.
 
I see it as 500 years ago we moved by the winds in our sails. Today its rockets that move our space ships. What will be possible in 500 years? Hell, I don't know but out progress is outstanding. "Mr. Scott, , warp 9".
 
I saw a show about claimed alien abductees where a guy makes and sells velostat lined hats to block telepathic commands from aliens.
He says it doesnt block them but changes the frequency of our brain waves so they cant read them, like "changing the channel".
Trippy.

Some frikin' wierdos we have walking around this planet; I wouldn't be surprised if they are either aliens or controlled by aliens to steer our social climate towards their goals.
Some of the protesters seen over the last year or so appear to be brainwashed morons; maybe them too.
 
DonP said:
That's a nice wish, but I don't think it will be more than that. And think of this. If you had just expended a dozen supernovas worth of energy moving your spacecraft to another star, would you just skim around the atmosphere of a planet full of sentient creatures and scare a few nut jobs? No, I think you would need something a little more positive to present to the mission sponsors.
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That is one of the best arguments against the earth ever having been visited by intelligent life from space. If you were to visit a planet with intelligent life, why seek out only the crazy people?

The thought of life, intelligent or otherwise, anywhere else in the universe is deeply fascinating, and I highly doubt earth is the sole place with life. but us having had visitors already? Nope.

That being said, I've seen plenty of things I can't explain. But I am 110 % sure none of them were supernatural phenomena or caused by visitors form other planets.
 
DonP said:
It won't. The rate of drift is slowing down and with it the spin of the earth. Eventually the earth will spin at the same rate as the moon revolves and both earth and moon will show the same face to each other. At that point the drift will stop.

That won't actually happen though. The sun will have become a red giant long before that and we will be below its surface.
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Just out of curiosity (and no, this is not a dissing question, quite the opposite), what's your profession?
 
Don O said:
Don, as an engineer, i believe that distance travel may some day be possible. Our collective technical knowledge is maybe 200 years old. Imagine asking some one in the 15th century about flying or going to the moon and you'd be be put in an asylum. The speed of light is a boundary that has not been exceeded; but why? Heck the speed of sound was thought to be a boundary. Give us another 1000 years and Star Trek stuff might really happen. Heck, I already have communicators (cell phones), meals in 2 minutes (microwaves), and wall size displays (100 inch LED TVs).
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I get what you mean, but it isn't quite right. The speed of sound was never seen as a boundary you couldn't exceed. It was simply recognised that the fluid characteristics of air would get very unfriendly beyond it. That was simply an engineering probem waiting to be solved. The speed of light is an altogether different thing. It is a limit that can't even be reached in so many different ways. Now it is sort of possible that there could be wormholes linking regions of space, but there are none anywhere near enough to be useful. And as they involve the event horizon of massive black holes they are a lot unfriendlier than the speed of sound. At the moment the roadblock is not just the engineering, but at a very fundamental level, the science.

But I'm not going to say never on that one.
 
DonP said:
I get what you mean, but it isn't quite right. The speed of sound was never seen as a boundary you couldn't exceed. It was simply recognised that the fluid characteristics of air would get very unfriendly beyond it. That was simply an engineering probem waiting to be solved. The speed of light is an altogether different thing. It is a limit that can't even be reached in so many different ways. Now it is sort of possible that there could be wormholes linking regions of space, but there are none anywhere near enough to be useful. And as they involve the event horizon of massive black holes they are a lot unfriendlier than the speed of sound. At the moment the roadblock is not just the engineering, but at a very fundamental level, the science.

But I'm not going to say never on that one.
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That’s kinda my point. Never say never. We didn’t have quarks (let alone up quarks and down quarks), bosons, leptons, hadrons, gluons or Neutrinos when I took physics in the 70s. Our evolution of scientific knowledge is accelerating exponentially since the Newton and Da Vinci days. Heck, we just detected gravity waves. Give another alien species far away from us a million year head start on us and I bet they have some really cool stuff! But they probably don’t know crap about the 12 bars blues :ROFLMAO:
 
Don O said:
That’s kinda my point. Never say never. We didn’t have quarks (let alone up quarks and down quarks), bosons, leptons, hadrons, gluons or Neutrinos when I took physics in the 70s. Our evolution of scientific knowledge is accelerating exponentially since the Newton and Da Vinci days. Heck, we just detected gravity waves. Give another alien species far away from us a million year head start on us and I bet they have some really cool stuff! But they probably don’t know crap about the 12 bars blues :ROFLMAO:
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Do you reckon any intelligent species could last a million years? Wouldn't they go extinct from boredom by then?
 
This is why I like Arthur C. Clarke's books. He creates futures based on scientific ideas (with a LOT of imagination thrown in) that makes anything seem possible. A lot of his stuff is extremely far fetched, but he still makes it seem like it just might happen sometime in the future.
 
Imagination is a big part of what makes the impossible possible.
Werner Von Bruan was one of the pioneers of the trip to the moon back in the 1950's.
This must have seemed like fantasy to the public at the time, before my time though.

 
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