Do you believe in UFOs?

Do you believe in UFOs?

  • Yes

    Votes: 31 43.7%

  • No

    Votes: 21 29.6%

  • Not sure

    Votes: 4 5.6%

  • I've been abducted!

    Votes: 15 21.1%
  • Total voters
    71
Fred Sherman said:
We've found evidence of life in our own solar system. That isn't in dispute.
Click to expand...
Of course there's life in our solar system. Earth. :) Seriously, though, where and when? I'm only aware of the possibility of life on Titan, one of Saturn's moons. I haven't seen, read, heard of anything stating that it is actually proven.
 
jmurrayhead said:
Of course there's life in our solar system. Earth. :) Seriously, though, where and when? I'm only aware of the possibility of life on Titan, one of Saturn's moons. I haven't seen, read, heard of anything stating that it is actually proven.
Click to expand...
There might be life... But not much of it is intelligent :sneaky:.
 
jmurrayhead said:
Of course there's life in our solar system. Earth. :) Seriously, though, where and when? I'm only aware of the possibility of life on Titan, one of Saturn's moons. I haven't seen, read, heard of anything stating that it is actually proven.
Click to expand...

I was going to say, I don't ever recall reading life other than earth was proven. Titan maybe and one of Jupiter moon Europa which hopefully one day nasa will fly a mission to. Possibly mars with the orbitor detecting vast amounts of methane which begs the question how is that originating, geologically or biologically (life)?
 
I believe in UFO's, they are unidentified until I know what they are.

I was in cornfield country in Indiana once and saw a very very large triangle shape in the night off in the distance. I decided to drive as close to it as I could get by heading North West on an intercept course, it was moving faster than me but was going to cross my path if I could get into position. This was to me an Unidentified Flying Object, while it was still in the distance but getting closer it transitioned from being a UFO into and IFO, more accurately IFO's. The triangle turned out to actually be a square, it was an optical illusion due to the angle I was seeing it at. The IFO's where a bunch of helicopters. It turns out they where flying the Mt Comfort airport for an airshow that was going to open the next day.

I think UFO is losing it's meaning, I feel it belongs to anything that is not yet identified no matter if it is a kid's kite or something from Ursala Major.
 
Shelley said:
I was going to say, I don't ever recall reading life other than earth was proven. Titan maybe and one of Jupiter moon Europa which hopefully one day nasa will fly a mission to. Possibly mars with the orbitor detecting vast amounts of methane which begs the question how is that originating, geologically or biologically (life)?
Click to expand...
Exactly. If it's actually been proven, I've be very interested in knowing the details.
 
jmurrayhead said:
Of course there's life in our solar system. Earth. :) Seriously, though, where and when? I'm only aware of the possibility of life on Titan, one of Saturn's moons. I haven't seen, read, heard of anything stating that it is actually proven.
Click to expand...
In 1976, Viking found organic compounds that confirmed life either does or at least has existed on Mars. I can't find the original article, which was a much more scholarly treatment on the subject by the probe team lead, but I did find this:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/10/061023-mars-life.html

We've also found evidence of fossilized life in martian meteors.

Just recently, NASA has confirmed that the ice that makes up the Hartley 2 comet matches the chemical signature of water on Earth, the first time this has ever been found in a comet.
 
Shelley said:
I was going to say, I don't ever recall reading life other than earth was proven. Titan maybe and one of Jupiter moon Europa which hopefully one day nasa will fly a mission to. Possibly mars with the orbitor detecting vast amounts of methane which begs the question how is that originating, geologically or biologically (life)?
Click to expand...

I don't think conclusive proof has been found. The best we have so far is that there might have been life here, or there, at one point or another, or that it would at least have been possible for life to have existed.

Recently, one of those science channels (Nat Geo or Discovery) showed life was discovered on earth in some of the most unlikely places, where nobody imagined it would be possible. One of the examples was a hot spring in Yellowstone park, where microscopic life was found in the highly sulfuric waters. Scientists until then assumed that it was impossible, and as such now have a whole new batch of solar bodies with similar conditions to consider as possibly containing life.

There's so many planets out there, that I am convinced we are not alone. And somehow, I would like to believe there is life out there, some of which perhaps more developed than us. And I do hope they will visit us, as mankind is in dire need of a wake-up call. If we're the pinnacle of what intelligent life is supposed to be, it's a pretty sad state of affairs.
 
SchmitzIT said:
I don't think conclusive proof has been found. The best we have so far is that there might have been life here, or there, at one point or another, or that it would at least have been possible for life to have existed.

Recently, one of those science channels (Nat Geo or Discovery) showed life was discovered on earth in some of the most unlikely places, where nobody imagined it would be possible. One of the examples was a hot spring in Yellowstone park, where microscopic life was found in the highly sulfuric waters. Scientists until then assumed that it was impossible, and as such now have a whole new batch of solar bodies with similar conditions to consider as possibly containing life.

There's so many planets out there, that I am convinced we are not alone. And somehow, I would like to believe there is life out there, some of which perhaps more developed than us. And I do hope they will visit us, as mankind is in dire need of a wake-up call. If we're the pinnacle of what intelligent life is supposed to be, it's a pretty sad state of affairs.
Click to expand...
this was interesting & related too http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/astrobiology_toxic_chemical.html

-

I just laugh in general because we can't even see the center of our own galaxy...we are like people sitting in a cosmic house looking through a window. To not think there is probably life out there is akin to believing that squirrels only exist in the view port known as your kitchen window.

How can we presume that what we are able to (we can observe less than 1% of the universe) collect as evidence is enough to constitute proof of non existence...by the vast amount of space involved ...it is an absolute possibility and a good probability.

Absence of proof is not proof of absence...and we have a large vacuum to search.

If there WAS someone watching us...they would grab us, knock on top of our heads...and declare something to the effect of..."meh...not quite ripe yet"
 
Fred Sherman said:
In 1976, Viking found organic compounds that confirmed life either does or at least has existed on Mars. I can't find the original article, which was a much more scholarly treatment on the subject by the probe team lead, but I did find this:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/10/061023-mars-life.html

We've also found evidence of fossilized life in martian meteors.

Just recently, NASA has confirmed that the ice that makes up the Hartley 2 comet matches the chemical signature of water on Earth, the first time this has ever been found in a comet.
Click to expand...

Wasn't the readings in the viking mission false? I'm quite sure it was.

I'm not too sure that is the case fred. the meteorite in Antarctica isn't proof that the micro fossil is actually life or was life. They tested the trapped gases inside the meteorite and confirmed it came from mars. Infact,I remember watching a documentary about national geographic getting exclusive rights to publish that the evidence of life was indeed found but that turned out to be false. the documentary is on youtube you should give it a watch.

is it sad i know that already? Good news imo, I personally feel NASA need a bigger budget to create more missions. such a shame politics get in the way of that.
 
Shelley said:
is it sad i know that already? Good news imo, I personally feel NASA need a bigger budget to create more missions. such a shame politics get in the way of that.
Click to expand...
+1, We need to be able to explore and advance in terms of the universe. How do we hope to advance as a species when our scope of understanding has now been permanently(or at least for this presidential and congressional term) capped?

On another note: Take me to your leader!
cast.jpg
...BRING BACK INVADER ZIM!
 
Shelley said:
Wasn't the readings in the viking mission false? I'm quite sure it was.
Click to expand...
No, the labeled release experiment on both Viking probes tested positive for microbial metabolism. Thats two separate probes, to different locations, and two conditions (one under sunlight, one in darkness). The results were dismissed as an error because the Mass Spec results came back negative, even though heating the samples to produce gases for the Gas Chromatograph would have destroyed any organic compounds.

A book worth reading on the topic that goes into more detail on the results from the various Viking life science probes: http://www.amazon.com/Life-Mars-Complete-Paul-Chambers/dp/0713727470

I think there is enough anecdotal evidence from a wide variety of sources to conclude that there either is or has been microbial and bacterial life in our own solar system outside of earth.

The question in my mind isn't the viability of life, but rather what is the narrow environmental window that allows evolution into more complex life forms and ultimately into intelligent, technology oriented, sentient beings?
 
Shelley said:
is it sad i know that already? Good news imo, I personally feel NASA need a bigger budget to create more missions. such a shame politics get in the way of that.
Click to expand...
Now you have me thinking about this differently.

Lets assume the roles are reversed. We detect the radio signals and we're going to be the ones to go there. But could we?

Lets just assume we can achieve near-light speed travel. It will still take years. A spacecraft is going to have to be large. It will need a crew, and supplies. Presumably some type of hydroponics to grow food during the mission. water and oxygen reclamation and recycling.

Knowing that there is at least one other intelligent species, we'd have to assume more and no guarantee that everyone is friendly, which would require self-defense. Also, we may have to stop along the way for raw materials or resources, so some type of shuttle capability. Kind of like having fighters, recon planes and helps on the same aircraft carrier.

Which brings us to our design analog: the USS George H. W. Bush, which cost $6.2 billion to build and weighs in at 102,000 tons. Lets use this as the basis for our starships.

A US carrier battle group consists of 1 carrier, 2 missile cruisers, 2 anti-aircraft cruisers, 2 destroyers and 1 submarine.

You can do the calculations yourself if you want, but the result is building this fleet will cost $27.8 billion and require 256,800 tons of material. Transporting the material into orbit for assembly, using the lowest space cargo rates, $6,495,000,000,000 for a grand total of $6,522,800,000,000.

And we know for a fact, we'd build two groups, because you could risk the failure of only one on something this important. So it would be $13 trillion dollars, or 22% of the world GDP.

When you look at it in terms of time, materials and expense, when would the human condition on planet earth ever be so good that humanity could justify such an endeavor?

It seems unlikely another species could either.
 
The question isn't "could", but rather "should" we.

To me, the answer in that case, would be no.

Just because we can do a thing, doesn't mean we should.

We are FAR from ready to start exploring "outer" space.

I don't think we should even consider it, till we as a species, have fixed our problems at home, first.
 
Pretty much
I mean the first response to a UFO over most countries, seems to be send up a jet and try and shoot it down.
We have wars over religion, race, land and resources, the universe really doesn't need that being spread around.
"Agent Smith" from The Matrix was right when he described the human race as a virus. :P
 
Top Bottom