Poll : do you believe in aliens ?

[samhelloall9]

I'll save you all time and money....it's BS.

 

[JSRF]

I remember the american Air Force revealed videos from jet fighters chasing something they have no idea of what this is. Everyone kinda forgot about it

 

[Marcos]

Life evolved here, so why wouldn't it evolve on other planets? My gut feeling though is that intelligent life like us is rare...that's my guess for why the Fermi paradox is a thing.

That and huge distances...as far as we know traveling faster-than-light is not possible...my hope is our science is wrong (I'm a big science fiction fan and that involves a lot of FTL travel, lol), but yeah. So, rare intelligent life plus incredible distances between stars might mean that civilizations meeting each other is an incredibly uncommon event.

Good point, but you also have to consider the possibility of "Wormholes". Einstein field equations suggest the existence of this kind of structures that could bend the space-time fabric in way that we could reach far regions of our universe almost instantaneously. That could solve the distance problem that you are mentioning.

 

[Dani Paradox]

I am an alien.

 

[Slacker]

I am an alien.

I'm a legal alien...

 

[weedoge]

Another argument supporting alien life is the fact that evidence on earth points to life originating in extreme conditions (extreme cold or heat) which is way more common in the universe than classic "life supporting conditions". While it may not be able to evolve into intelligent life, the likelihood of microbial or microscopic life forms elsewhere in the universe is almost definite.

 

[weedoge]

And mind you it's only OBSERVABLE universe. Which they say stretches in equal distances in all directions from Earth. It's a sphere with Earth at it's very center. So either we just so happened to reside in the center of the entire Universe. Or there's simply a limit of how far we can observe from Earth. So the entire Universe can be much bigger than observable or even infinitely big.

We're not the centre of the universe, its just as you say we can only see in equal distances from the earth because of the speed of light and expansion of the universe. We can't see past a certain point because the light simply hasn't had a time to reach us yet. It would be the same for any other frame of reference, they may originally hypothesis that they are at the centre of the universe. It would be correct to say any frame of reference I'd the centre of their observable universe.

 

[satou]

We're not the centre of the universe

I wonder, is there proof (theoretical or otherwise) for this? Not that I disagree with the statement, but seems to me it's an assumption rather than fact.

 

[weedoge]

I wonder, is there proof (theoretical or otherwise) for this? Not that I disagree with the statement, but seems to me it's an assumption rather than fact.

When discussing things related to the origin of the universe we're really making assumptions based on what we can see now. Just like there's no way to disprove things like god but their existence would be entirely unintuitive.

Regardless of the strength of the evidence I'm of the strong belief that we're not the centre of the universe because that would suggest that we're special in some way. Being at the literal centre, if there even is one, would need a much more unlikely explanation than "its all random and nothing is special".

If you travel to the middle of an ocean it would appear is if you're the centre of everything if you have no way of seeing past the horizon. Move a few miles in any direction and your observations would be the same. That's how I think about the observable universe.

 

[satou]

When discussing things related to the origin of the universe we're really making assumptions based on what we can see now. Just like there's no way to disprove things like god but their existence would be entirely unintuitive.

Regardless of the strength of the evidence I'm of the strong belief that we're not the centre of the universe because that would suggest that we're special in some way. Being at the literal centre, if there even is one, would need a much more unlikely explanation than "its all random and nothing is special".

If you travel to the middle of an ocean it would appear is if you're the centre of everything if you have no way of seeing past the horizon. Move a few miles in any direction and your observations would be the same. That's how I think about the observable universe.

Yeah I understand that (the Copernican principle if I remember correctly). But I imagine that unlike your god example, this might be something that could actually be backed up by evidence, although perhaps observational is more likely than theoretical.

 

[weedoge]

Yeah I understand that (the Copernican principle if I remember correctly). But I imagine that unlike your god example, this might be something that could actually be backed up by evidence, although perhaps observational is more likely than theoretical.

Yeah I saw a video discussing it that made it actually seem harder to understand for me. But I believe its harder to explain and understand because the reason we can't really see further is because dark energy is pushing the universe apart faster than the speed of light and well everything started at the "centre" of course. I might be totally wrong on that though, I'm hugely interested in theoretical and particle physics but I guess less so when it comes to the big bang because there's actually very little we really know about it. Pretty sure as much as we can hypothesise, there's really no way with our current methods to know what came before the big bang.

I love theoretical physics because we can being to understand and document the fabric of reality with real evidence and almost no guessing, and when we do guess we generally are able to prove those guesses when we hit certain energy levels in accelerators.

Early astrophysics will probably be more of a mystery for a long long time.

 

[lost illusions]

Religion is a way to control the masses. Faith is the belief in something not yet proved. Yes I have faith in ET by definition

 

[weedoge]

Religion is a way to control the masses. Faith is the belief in something not yet proved. Yes I have faith in ET by definition

As much as people use faith like this or the flying spaghetti monster as a joke, its a pretty important point in the debate I think.

 

[lost illusions]

As much as people use faith like this or the flying spaghetti monster as a joke, its a pretty important point in the debate I think.

Yup

 

[satou]

But I believe its harder to explain and understand because the reason we can't really see further is because dark energy is pushing the universe apart faster than the speed of light and well everything started at the "centre" of course.

I believe that right now this isn't the problem yet, but it will be in the future, assuming there are no changes in the expansion of the universe.

It's my understanding that our current visible edge of the universe is the universe at a very early time period, and that our inability to see beyond, farther into the past, is caused by the universe not being opaque at that time.

Interestingly it could even be possible that the universe is actually smaller than the visible universe. The universe would have to wrap around for this to be true. This could mean that certain large scale structures might be visible from multiple angles (this depends on the exact shape of the universe), but changes over time might make this hard to see. Different viewing angles might show the same structure at different times, and changes over time might make it extremely difficult to recognize.

Maybe read The hidden reality by Brain Greene. It's been a while since I read it but it talks about this sort of stuff.

 

[weedoge]

I believe that right now this isn't the problem yet, but it will be in the future, assuming there are no changes in the expansion of the universe.

It's my understanding that our current visible edge of the universe is the universe at a very early time period, and that our inability to see beyond, farther into the past, is caused by the universe not being opaque at that time.

Interestingly it could even be possible that the universe is actually smaller than the visible universe. The universe would have to wrap around for this to be true. This could mean that certain large scale structures might be visible from multiple angles (this depends on the exact shape of the universe), but changes over time might make this hard to see. Different viewing angles might show the same structure at different times, and changes over time might make it extremely difficult to recognize.

Maybe read The hidden reality by Brain Greene. It's been a while since I read it but it talks about this sort of stuff.

I'd be super interested to read that but my plan is to leave within a few weeks :(

Really interesting stuff though yes, I read recently too that the shape of the universe is the variable we really need to know what the fate of the universe might be and from my understanding.. The shape we measure it at suggest its very close to the critical point between a big crunch and a heat death.

The idea of a possible big crunch and then also a big bounce is super interesting to me, it might explain how the universe could be eternal in some sense while still being disordered. I dreamed of being a physicist tbh but happy to die not knowing even the basics because I know how frustrating it would be when I truly realise there are some questions we just can't answer.

 

[satou]

@weedoge
Maybe something you'll appreciate, interview with Feynman:

 

[weedoge]

@weedoge
Maybe something you'll appreciate, interview with Feynman:

Yessss. I just love the passionate logic these guys give for their beliefs. Pretty inspiring.

 

[Johnnythefox]

 

[ScarsAndStitches]

yes I believe in aliens. The universe is too vast for there not to be aliens.

 

[Psilo]

They're among us, watch out people!

 

[Soon4me]