BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Art Thieme
Date: 04 Aug 08 - 01:57 PM

And my brother, Richard, who I admire a lot, has done good work looking at what has gone down.

Art

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 04 Aug 08 - 02:04 PM

Of course we could tell if it was life or not if we studied it. Life exhibits certain traits and we can observe those traits.

From Wiki
>>Life is a condition that distinguishes organisms from non-living objects, such as non-life, and dead organisms, being manifested by growth through metabolism and reproduction. Some living things can communicate and many can adapt to their environment through changes originating internally. A physical characteristic of life is that it feeds on negative entropy.[1][2] In more detail, according to physicists such as John Bernal, Erwin Schrödinger, Eugene Wigner, and John Avery, life is a member of the class of phenomena which are open or continuous systems able to decrease their internal entropy at the expense of substances or free energy taken in from the environment and subsequently rejected in a degraded form (see: entropy and life).[3][4]

Whether it is carbon based or chlorine based or silicon etc, is a bit of an irrelevancy. With billions or trillions of planets out there, there is room for all possibilities, but if easy interstellar travel exists, the ones with similar requirements to ours would be the most likely to interact with us. What would be the point of them taking people aboard for a good old anal probing if the probees could not survive the ships life support?

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Little Hawk
Date: 04 Aug 08 - 02:14 PM

"Of course we could tell if it was life or not if we studied it. Life exhibits certain traits and we can observe those traits."

That's a pretty broad assumption, Jack? Are you sure? Are you 100% sure?

Why, your body might be literally crawling with alien life that you are blissfully unaware of and which we presently have no scientific instruments capable of detecting! Think about that when you lie down to sleep tonight. ;-D

But I agree fully with this statement: "if easy interstellar travel exists, the ones (beings) with similar requirements to ours would be the most likely to interact with us."

Exactly. That's a very relevant point. A "fire" being, for instance, would probably prefer visiting stars than visiting Earth-like planets. (just an analogy to illustrate the point)

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 04 Aug 08 - 03:14 PM

Yeah LH,

I'm pretty sure. If you are talking about life made of atoms and that uses energy. I am 100% sure. That's the kind of life I'm talking about because that's pretty much our current definition of life.

If you are postulating some sort of subatomic or trans-dimensional "alien life" that is undetectable by humans, that fine. But since that kind of life obvious cannot effect me because it is not manifest in my plane of existence, then I choose not to speculate on whether it exists or not.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Little Hawk
Date: 04 Aug 08 - 04:53 PM

No, Jack, it can't affect you. The effect is what has happened after it has affected you. (Heh! A pedant's delight, that one.)

I can understand that you have little interest in forms of life that can't affect you. I was just discussing it because it's kind of an interesting possibility (to me, anyway).

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 04 Aug 08 - 05:41 PM

But Little Hawk. They can't be life forms. Not unless you redefine life. The distinction is purely philosophical. Its like counting how many aliens which are infinitely small can dance on the head of a pin.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Little Hawk
Date: 04 Aug 08 - 05:58 PM

Well, Jack, I think that anything which is sentient is alive. I don't think that's the only way of being alive, some live things probably aren't sentient...but I do think that everything which is sentient is alive...otherwise it wouldn't be sentient at all. It thinks, therefore it is.

I would include transdimensional beings, or what we might term "spirits", for instance, among things that are sentient...though they might not exist physically in our terms.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 04 Aug 08 - 07:42 PM

"But not life as we know it, Jim"!!!

Everything I know, I learned from Star Trek.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 04 Aug 08 - 07:52 PM

It depends on what you mean by sentient.

From Wiki

Sentience is the ability to feel or perceive subjectively.

Many philosophers, notably Colin McGinn, believe that sentience will never be understood, no matter how much progress is made by neuroscience in understanding the brain. Holders of this position are called New Mysterians. They do not deny that most other aspects of consciousness are subject to scientific investigation, from creativity to sapience and self-awareness. New Mysterians believe that only sentience cannot be comprehensively understood by science. There continues to be much debate among philosophers, with many adamant that there is really no hard problem with sentience whatsoever.

In science fiction, an alien, android, robot or computer who is described as "sentient" is often ascribed qualities such as will, desire, consciousness, ethics, personality, intelligence, insight, and so on. Sentience is being used in this context to describe an essential human property that brings all these other qualities with it.

In many science fiction works sentience is often used as a synomym for sapience meaning "human-level or higher intelligence".

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Little Hawk
Date: 04 Aug 08 - 11:08 PM

Hmmm. Yes, it's interesting stuff, isn't it?

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: catspaw49
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 12:10 AM

Ya' know, I'm thinkin' I got a bad deal from one of them Ufologist guys. He stuck his finger up my ass, told me my prostate was okay, and charged me $325.00.............Now y'all are saying these guys only research UFO's..............Damn...I think I took a fuckin' on that deal............literally..................

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 01:20 AM

Spaw,

I've got some really bad news for ya.
I saw the footage form Roswell.
Its all over the YouTubes!
That dude has his hands behind his back.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: catspaw49
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 01:29 AM

aw damn.............I bet he was wearing one of them tin hats too huh?

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 01:35 AM

You better hope that he was wearing a willie-hat.

;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: catspaw49
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 01:41 AM

...........A willie hat?...........................ohmygawd.....................Do you think I might be pregnant?

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 02:05 AM

LOL

I didn't get a good look at his face the video was kinda pixely. But if you think he was an alien you might get yourself checked for one of them chestbusters.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 03:38 AM

I have a poem about my own UFO (Uncomfortable Freaking Orifice) experience. It must be good poetry because it is true.


Stay-at-Home and Nurse.
By Squirmy Redbottom

Its clear to see I am annoyed
by my throbbing hemmoroid

To slather it with fish oil cream
will bring relief is what I deem

Go slather it will oily goo
is really what I ought to do

To bathroom I now go to put
some ointment on my aching butt

The applicator's slick and black slide
it up into my aching back side.

Rub it on each bloody lobe
Like some crazy ail'yen probe

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Stu
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 05:04 AM

"I'm pretty sure. If you are talking about life made of atoms and that uses energy. I am 100% sure."

I don't think we can be 100% sure at all - I don't think we can be 5% sure, if that.

We recognise carbon-based life forms on earth (and find new ones all the time) but we have no way of knowing how the chemistry might work and give rise to non-carbon-based life forms, or what processes such a life form might use to gather nutrients, breathe (if it needs to), replicate or communicate. It's thought processes might take eons, it might not have a physical body in the sense we understand it, it might be too tiny to see or too huge to comprehend as a living entity.

We might land on a planet of silicon-based life forms and see rocks, when what we might be looking at is a thriving advanced civilisation that takes years to say 'hello' - and they might not use sound to do that but change colour slowly over time. or whatever.

The real point about alien life forms is they will be, er, alien and probably unlike anything we can imagine. The fact most of these cover-up stories are about humanoid aliens with two eyes, a nose, mouth and the same limbs as us, the same basic skeletal configuration suggests to me who started these theories had a singular lack of imagination.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 05:20 AM

No, I don't believe that, if it is life, and it is made out of atoms and uses energy, then it is not too small to see, or at least detect with a microscope and since it is alive we would be able to detect the energy and chemical processes by which it lives. Life as we define it is governed by physics and chemistry. We are quite able to detect physical and chemical reactions.

Having too broad a definition of life, leads to nonsensical conclusions. Are planets alive? Is your alarm clock? Both have some of the aspects of life. But it makes no sense to call them alive.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 05:31 AM

An interesting talk on physics The Black Hole War

It has little to do with the subject but might be of interest to readers of this thread.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: DMcG
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 06:06 AM

There is a lot of debate still on the question of whether a virus is alive or not (eg here). If we can't decide on something so familiar to us, I would certainly be hesitant of making declarations about alien forms. To take the time-based example, a creature with very low "metabolic rate" (or its equivalent) and a lifetime of 1000 years would be very difficult to detect simply because our attention span might easily miss any significant happening if we only watch it for a year or so.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Paul Burke
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 06:16 AM

If a virus isn't alive, it's an interesting case: non- life that is (almost certainly) descended from living organisms. As the ultimate stripped- down parasite, the virus is a striking illustration of the "selfish gene"- DNA that exists purely to replicate more DNA like itself.

We've gone through what is sentience/ sapience. Now it's what do we mean by life. Please don't complicate the question of life, because I'd love to get one.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 06:33 AM

The concept of a creature with a "metabolic rate" rate to slow to detect seems like nonsense to me. Self sustained Chemical, thermal and electrical reactions are bounded by physical laws which are detectable. Even where liquid helium exists, maybe on Pluto, and it is so cold that our normal rules don't apply we should theoretically be able to send and observatory of a probe to observe.


On the other hand, this is the most interesting sentient theoretical "thing" I've heard of in a while. Boltzmann brain

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 06:35 AM

Please excuse the typos.

Trouble sleeping, sentience slipping away....

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: DMcG
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 06:55 AM

The concept of a creature with a "metabolic rate" rate too slow to detect seems like nonsense to me

My point was not that the processes might be too slow to detect, but that it could be too slow for us to correctly identify them for what they were. The problem is not in the physics or chemistry, but in us. After all, its not likely to be a particular well funded area of research is it - "stare at this rocklike thing for five years and let me know if any happens, will you?" *grin*

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Stu
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 07:40 AM

I think our ancestors will be significantly broadening the definition of what's 'alive' in the future.

Future spacemen might pass through a sentient gas cloud light years across and neither they or the cloud might realise they had been there.

If a bluebottle lands on a basking blue whale, would it recognise it as being alive? Would the blue whale be able to tell the fly was there? The fly's perception of time is such we appear as lumbering behemoths that the fly can easily avoid being swatted by - the whale's movements are probably so slow to a fly as to be virtually unrecognisable to it as a living thing.

Now, the whale isn't stupid and might want to communicate with the fly - how does it do that ? How would it indicate to the fly it wanted to talk to it?

We have no idea what forms alien life might take as we don't understand how life works ourselves yet. It might seem like nonsense that a creature has a metabolic rate too slow to detect, but it's certainly possible.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Paul Burke
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 07:56 AM

And the converse is true- a creature that lived out its existence in a few microseconds might appear to us as a mere glitch in, say, an electric field, even though to itself, its life feels as long (or short) as ours. Entire civilisations could be passing unnoticed except as static on the radio. Cohen & Stewart's book, What Does a Martian Look Like? The Science of Extraterrestrial Life, postulates several such possibilities.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: DMcG
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 08:17 AM

A further complication is what is known as 'inattential blindness': we don't see things because we are too busy concentraiting on something else. My favourite example is the 'invisible gorilla'. Here's a clip from a website describing one such experiment.

Subjects were asked to monitor one of the teams of players by counting the number of passes they made. After about 45 seconds of performing this task, an unexpected event occurred. In all versions, many observers failed to see the change. For more details about this inattentional blindness, visit the lab page and look under inattentional blindness.

The Video

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Peace
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 08:22 AM

Wasn't very nice of the kids not to let him play, imo.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: catspaw49
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 08:31 AM

Hmmmmm......What would a whale say to a fly?

"Get off me you little bastard! Your feet are covered in dog shit!"

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Stu
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 08:35 AM

Good links both - it certainly gets the imagination going . . .

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 11:31 AM

>>a creature that lived out its existence in a few microseconds might appear to us as a mere glitch in, say, an electric field,

From Wiki

Life is a condition that distinguishes organisms from non-living objects, such as non-life, and dead organisms, being manifested by growth through metabolism and reproduction. Some living things can communicate and many can adapt to their environment through changes originating internally. A physical characteristic of life is that it feeds on negative entropy.[1][2] In more detail, according to physicists such as John Bernal, Erwin Schrödinger, Eugene Wigner, and John Avery, life is a member of the class of phenomena which are open or continuous systems able to decrease their internal entropy at the expense of substances or free energy taken in from the environment and subsequently rejected in a degraded form (see: entropy and life)
__________

Could such a creature feed on negative entropy? From the way you describe it, it is negative entropy. What about Metabolism? Reproduction? Wouldn't those things be detectable?

What would a gas cloud in space metabolize? As an uncontained gas cloud, its thermal energy would cause it to disburse. The more energy the faster the molecules would spread apart. By nature it would not be able to feed on negative entropy. So if a spaceship came upon a gas cloud which has some force acting upon it or within it which was allowing it to ignore Boyles Law, it might not be immediately recognizable as life but it would certainly be weird enough to be studied until Mr. Spock figured out why it was defying basic physical laws.

I was thinking about this before I went to sleep last night. I need to refine my statement. It would be very difficult to detect life in habitats that are highly inhospitable, the surface of a star, the magma of a planet. So I will say that if we can thoroughly observe it, we can determine if it is alive.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: CarolC
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 11:33 AM

To suggest that the variety of life forms that are possible is some kind of evidence that we can't have been visited by life forms that are similar to us is more an act of faith than logical reasoning.

As has been said before, just because there is probably an infinite number of possible life forms, that doesn't mean that there can't be similar life forms (lots of them), and if there are, it only makes sense that the ones who seek us out would be similar to us.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Donuel
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 12:28 PM

I propose no argument to you. I ask not for belief or non belief.
   I only ask you to see for yourself.

Our evolved 5 senses enable us to see life that is like ourselves.

With tools and instruments we can see see much more life that is somehat like ourselves.

When wee "see" life quite unlike ourselves it is but a glimpse of light that defies our known scientific laws. Even then we may only be seeing thier instruments and tools and not their life form.

(The instruments from other life forms may be made of the most stable and durable mass in the universe, strange matter. Strange matter has protons and neutrons in its nucleus that are composed of 'strange' quarks and not our usual up down variety.)

So far we may overly concerned with new materials research to the exclusion of the most important issue of the actual life that produced them. In my opinion that is the epitomy of short sightedness.



What can you do as an individual to educate yourself to the ubiquitous life around and above us?
Get a pair of second or third generation of light intensifying binoculars for aout $4 thousand. Then at night...
look up.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Donuel
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 12:56 PM

Jack, thank you very much for the Leonard Susskind lecture.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Stu
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 01:48 PM

"To suggest that the variety of life forms that are possible is some kind of evidence that we can't have been visited by life forms that are similar to us is more an act of faith than logical reasoning."

It isn't actually, because the scientific basis for this reasoning has been found right here, on earth, and gives an insight to the incredible improbability of our own existence as a species able to comprehend tour own origin.

The Burgess Shale was discovered in the mountains of British Columbia in 1909 by a chap called Charles Walcott. This (and others like it discovered since) assemblage of animals 520 years old had with it a number of phyla of animals which no longer exist. In fact, most of the phyla present in the shales represent animals whose evolutionary paths stopped some time after the shales were laid down. Of all the weird and wonderful animals of the Burgess Shale only spiders, insects, crabs, worms and one small swimming animal with a concentrated bundle of nerve fibres running the length of it's body - a chordate, the earliest one ever found and possibly our ancestor.

Why this one fragile animal should survive the extinction event that befell the Burgess Shale fauna is unknown, but it could hinge on the tiniest mutation that animal had - remember natural selection works not because a species is better or more advanced than any other or is particularly well adapted to it's current environment, but because it has some physical advantage for sudden change in it's living environment that enables it to survive. Generalists are in it for the long term, specialists are mere evolutionary blips (bad new for hummingbirds in the long run then . . .).

The significance of all this is that to reach the stage we have, carbon-based bipedal breathers of oxygen is dependent on a massive number of variables - way too many to comprehend. Rewind the tape of life on earth back to the Burgess Shale, press play again and the outcome could be entirely different - there would be no way of predicting which animal would eventually give rise to Homo sapiens. Rewind the tape a million times, you get a million different outcomes.

So the chances of another animal turning up with a physical configuration that is essentially a variant of our own is almost nothing. The universe is of course a very big place, so it could happen but in reality the chances of aliens looking like cute doe-eyed elves with no external genitalia is so small as to be infinitesimal. As is our own existence as a species.

I highly recommend Stephen J Gould's excellent Wonderful Life for anyone interested in this subject - it really is an incredible book.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Little Hawk
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 02:06 PM

stigweard - "The fact most of these cover-up stories are about humanoid aliens with two eyes, a nose, mouth and the same limbs as us, the same basic skeletal configuration suggests to me who started these theories had a singular lack of imagination."


Really, stigweard? Well, your reaction suggests to me what Carol said:

"To suggest that the variety of life forms that are possible is some kind of evidence that we can't have been visited by life forms that are similar to us is more an act of faith than logical reasoning."

Exactly. You are proceeding on faith, stigweard. Faith which is based on nothing more than your own past habits and assumptions, those assumptions based on your own limited knowledge and experience...which doesn't include any encounters with aliens thus far.

On the other hand, an actual eyewitness to an incident such as the aftermath of the crash at Roswell is NOT proceeding on faith when he says that he saw alien bodies of a generally humanoid type. He's proceeding on direct observation, and his previous assumptions about what kind of alien life would be most likely to be out there have absolutely nothing to bear on what he sees with that direct observation, do they? That compels him to amend his previous assumptions...which were based on faith. Now, the fact that you find your own faith more compelling than many direct observations by highly qualified eyewitnesses is interesting...and it's typical of most human beings.

They'd rather just go on believing whatever they already believe. ;-) Only a direct encounter with something radically different will suffice to change their minds.

This is why I say, and I always have said, that virtually all people are in fact religious...whether or not they belong to any religion at all...and whether or not they believe in any "God". They are religious because they base a whole lot of their unproven assumptions on something almost unshakable....their own ironclad faith that they are "right" and that they are more "logical" and "rational" than those who think differently.

You know what most people really worship?   Their worship their own ego, that's what. It is the God they render daily worship to, and it has to keep on being "right", no matter what. That's faith.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Art Thieme
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 02:12 PM

As I have said, based on those mentioned 5 senses, "We are here, and they are probably there!"

As I have also said in other threads, after which those with faith tried to kick me in the balls, "Faith is wishful thinking!" I have thought out that statement well. I have also thought out the premise that to 'have faith' the necessary 'leaps' are, by definition, leaps over the unknown and into the fantastic--as in fantasy.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Donuel
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 02:18 PM

Art, beg borrow or steal a 3rd generation LI binocular and you will see any night of the week ufos capable of breaking some of our current laws of physics.

either our current laws are incomlplete

or we all share the same delusion of seeing the same things.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Little Hawk
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 02:24 PM

Yes, faith is wishful thinking. And it's all the weight and force of established habit and convention. It is found as much among the supposedly non-religious as it is among the religious...just placed in different areas, that's all.

The humanoid form may be found throughout the Universe. Wouldn't that be a surprise to some people it turned out to be so...and then we would have to come up with some radical new scientific theories to explain it, wouldn't we?

Here's one for you: perhaps the Earth is not such a unique and solitary site for the development of life as we have thought it to be. Perhaps, like one small island in the Pacific Ocean, it is just one of many such fertile sites spread over a far larger cosmic field that goes way beyond our own solar system. Perhaps our present point of view is extremely Earth-centric and parochial, and our present science has barely scratched the surface of what is out there.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: CarolC
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 02:27 PM

I'm not a big fan of Stephen J. Gould.

It is an act of faith because there is an infinite universe out there, filled with an infinite amount of possibility. To say that because we here on earth have made observations about conditions on this planet, we can extrapolate that to determine what will be found throughout the rest of the cosmos is an enormous leap of faith.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Art Thieme
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 02:27 PM

Donuel,

Too vague. Please, define your terms.

Art

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 02:34 PM

Donuel,

Are you saying that any scientist, at any time could go outside his own house and prove that there are alien machines in the sky defying Newton's laws?

Someone should publish a paper! ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Little Hawk
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 02:36 PM

What might be a bit more difficult would be to prove that there is sentient life in Ohio. ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 02:38 PM

If we can't communicate with any other of the billions of lifeforms with which we share this planet, how are we going to communicate with those of, or indeed from, another planet?

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: catspaw49
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 02:41 PM

Well, there may be damn little here but I don't see any on this thread much either Hawkster. (;<))

On the other hand I have turned over a new leaf and am now searching the life's work of the great WalksaboutVerse as you can see. I hope to find the true path that he has and hope also to see his voluminous poetry placed alongside the DT for posterity. With any luck Max will host his site right here at the Mudcat.

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 02:47 PM

If somehow, there is science beyond Einstein's which allows interstellar travel in less much than thousands of years. If we are or have been visited, I think that it is more likely that the visitors would be humanoid (shaped like humans) at least in the basics.

They would have had to evolve as tool user, so two eyes for stereoscopic vision, something like arms and hands for tool using, something like legs for getting around and lifting heavy things, a mouth and ears for language, a nose to tell if their food has gone bad Etc. some of those things might be more or less evolved than their analogs in homo sapiens.

The famous gray aliens are a pretty good projection of what a human evolved for space might look like, Gracefull, hands, light bodies, certainly they appear to have proportionally very large brian pans. But they appear to be either all male, or not mammals. They have very small hips. If they were mammals like us, can you imagine how much trouble their mothers must have giving birth.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 02:54 PM

Of course not Spaw!

This thread is just pixels on your monitor.

Unless you printed it out. And if you did you may have made Little Hawk's point.

By the way, last time I checked, sentient life was ahead in Ohio by 0.5

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/oh/ohio_mccain_vs_obama-400.html

:-D

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Little Hawk
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 02:55 PM

I'm glad you've experienced that epiphany, Spaw. You are clearly on a path out of the darkness and into the light of wisdom and understanding. ;-)

Jack - Yeah, the Greys are interesting. If they are indeed real beings, then I think they might have quite a different form of reproduction to ours. They might lay eggs, for instance, as reptiles do. Or they might bud, somewhat as plants do.

I think your reasoning on the likelihood of a humanoid form developing is spot on. If you want to use tools and create things with them, a humanoid type of form is extremely handy.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 03:06 PM

>>Jack - Yeah, the Greys are interesting. If they are indeed real beings, then I think they might have quite a different form of reproduction to ours. They might lay eggs, for instance, as reptiles do. Or they might bud, somewhat as plants do.

Or their mommies and or daddies are lab equipment.