Quite agree with you.
All I am pointing out is the massive distances between stars and the time taken to travel between them.
It is one thing going to Mars, our closest neighbour and and interstellar travel.
UAP - Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon
- Thread starter altodevil
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Quite agree with you.
All I am pointing out is the massive distances between stars and the time taken to travel between them.
It is one thing going to Mars, our closest neighbour and and interstellar travel.
Fair enough mate, yeah while anything is possible it does seem unlikely that technology capable of allowing relatively quick travel between solar systems has been invented. (I'm talking warp drives etc)
Still though hypothetically if they are probes one possibility is they could have been sent a very, very long time ago.
That is true, if you imagine the radio wave front to be a sphere, the surface area increases with the square of the radius. Therefore, if you have an antenna on Earth that has certain fixed aperture , it can only "capture" that amount of area from the wave. The problem is, since energy is conserved, because the total wave sphere keeps increasing in size, the amount of energy you capture with your Earth antenna keeps getting smaller and smaller (quadratically) with the increase in distance to the transmitter.
Not to mention, we dumb earthlings already have ways to transmit below noise level with spread spectrum. An advanced civilization may be using codings that look like background noise to us. If they are using radio waves at all.
Sending probes between stars could be possible, providing they are very small. So called Nanotechnology.
That could overcome the mass issue. The lighter the mass, the lower the force.
If you could find a way to accelerate a tiny mass to reasonable percentages of the speed of light, then it could be possible.
But such Nano sized vehicles would have very limited capabilities. And of course would be unlikely to show up on normal radar due to the tiny cross section.
And hence would not be identified as a UAP.
Yeah I have seen ideas to send swarms of tiny probes out into space with solar sails that could reach the nearest solar system relatively quickly. But as you say something like that wouldn't be able to do much but collect data in orbit once there.
I've read quotes from a few scientists over the years even some who were involved in seti who think the whole programme is unlikely to detect much if anything of note in regards to intelligent civilisations.
Though if I remember correctly they are switching to a new array in 2025 I think so hopefully that improves their capabilities.
Indeed.
Until we actually manage to pick up a definitive signal, if ever, we are going to have to rely on probabilities of humanity being unique in our galaxy, or not.
I am still satisfied that the Drake Equation represents a best reasonable probability.
Yeah that was an attempt to explain Betelgeuse's dimming. Personally had fingers crossed on the Dyson sphere but looks like it was caused by a dust cloud.
Assuming they could even get to a stable orbit when there. People forget that if it takes X amount of energy to accelerate to get to another star, it takes X^2 the energy to slow back down, a formidable problem. That's why so many of these proposed swarm types of mission are flybys rather than hover-around-in-remote-parts-of-an-alien-planet.
That is right.
And of course, should such a vehicle manage to fly the massive distances from their planet to ours and as you say, slow down from a very high speed; many orders of magnitude faster than the snail pace speed we have achieved, any communications back to their planet would take many tens or hundreds of years to reach them. Making two way communications impractical.
So, again, I question what purpose would their actually be.
Nothing is impossible, given the laws of physics. But the likelihood of such things is probably vanishingly low
Is it not fair to say - that if these things were determined to be non-human - that their purpose will be impossible for us to assume/ascertain?
Actually just to correct myself, the energy required to accelerate something squares with the velocity required and the same thing applies if you want to decelerate so it's a colossal requirement on both ends of the journey.
That’s my take on it and anyone applying the idea that they would or wouldn’t do such and such because humans wouldn’t is a bit of a stretch.
That is correct as long as the acceleration and deceleration are in the same atmosphere.
Acceleration converts the fuel into kinetic and deceleration converts the kinetic into heat.
So no energy is gained or lost.
It was a joke, easy now.
Do some intelligent people really believe in flat earth? Who would that be?
Same here it would have been an amazing discovery.
Ah fair enough I wasn't aware of that. I wasn't too familiar with the plans to be honest.
There is a separate thread for Flat Earth.
Guaranteed 100% way to find out once and for all whether there is intelligent life somewhere in our galaxy.
Transmit a signal of Pink Floyd Comfortably Numb.
But only transmit it once and then wait.
If there is another humanity out there, they are bound to send a signal asking us to play it again. And again, and again.
SETI. You can have this solution for free. Just go ahead and do it.
Transmit a signal of Pink Floyd Comfortably Numb.
But only transmit it once and then wait.
If there is another humanity out there, they are bound to send a signal asking us to play it again. And again, and again.
SETI. You can have this solution for free. Just go ahead and do it.
There was a project to transmit high powered directed bursts to certain stars in the galaxy. Not sure what the data was.
That was the plan I was aware of. Rather than scatter gun approach, target specific areas.
Just out of interest, what would you transmit.
Resonance freq of Hydrogen times Pi
Resonance freq of Hydrogen times Pi
44629147 if I am not mistaken.
Very good question. But I prefer "please can you play Comfortably Numb again 44629147 times".
That way you get the best of both worlds. Science,
Numeracy and culture.
Coordinates of Anfield and something really insulting.
Like that too. Very inventive. Or just a photo of Klopp face. Then they would definitely know that there was no intelligent life on earth.
Sending messages for advanced civilisations to find strikes me as being a bit like seeing someone nick a handbag, chasing after them and then when you have them cornered realising they’re 20 times bigger than you and in the mood to rumble. Keep them the feck away - at least until we have a Death Star.
I see your point but surely that's a terrible analogy?
I’m in the “we shouldn’t be giving our location away” camp.
We kind of did with Voyager though ?
The Cretaceous period on Earth is the closest thing we have to understanding what apex predators could look like on another planet. There must be some really fecking hostile planets/lifeforms out there. You'd like to think dinosaurs/reptiles don't have it in them to evolve into an intelligent, space travelling species but you never know, they could exist somewhere
Ironic to think Carl Sagan could end up being responsible for the destruction of all life on earth.
Let’s hope nobody finds it, given it pretty much has our address on it.
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Unless you could say send lots of very tiny things very fast that could then assemble into something much larger on arrival. Or something very tiny that could replicate using local materials into something much larger.
People who propose things like this should be released in a lion enclosure wearing a meat coat to see if they can see the flaw in their theory.
The former i believe, Nano satellites seem to be built using 10cm cubes.
https://alen.space/basic-guide-nanosatellites/
The Cretaceous period on Earth is the closest thing we have to understanding what apex predators could look like on another planet. There must be some really fecking hostile planets/lifeforms out there. You'd like to think dinosaurs/reptiles don't have it in them to evolve into an intelligent, space travelling species but you never know, they could exist somewhere
Possibly.
But it was only after the Dinosaurs were wiped out that saw the rise of the mammals. And ultimately Homo Sapien Sapien.
Here's a fun one
I personally welcome our new Galactic Empire overlords.
Always knew Star Wars was a documentary.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/06/23/ufos-catch-congress-interest-lawmakers-495778
Report out tomorrow. Unlikely to confirm Krang exists.
Report out tomorrow. Unlikely to confirm Krang exists.
Seems so silly even discussing what we think is possible, of course we have to, its part of the process, but our knowledge today is barely based on our last 100 years or so of research and discovery. Its a laughably insignificant length of time given the subject matter. We don't have a scooby doo about what is possible.
Give it another million years, then we'll talk. Will humanity be around in any fashion in a million years? Feck knows, I'm not qualified to have an opinion on it, nobody is.
Give it another million years, then we'll talk. Will humanity be around in any fashion in a million years? Feck knows, I'm not qualified to have an opinion on it, nobody is.
I suspect that even if it does explicitly debunk/deny "aliens" as a reason, some will take the very denial as evidence that it might be aliens. Even though the only reason the UFO/UAP thing is gaining increased attention is that the government and public officials have (as seen by some) opened the door to it.