BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits

Subject: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Little Hawk
Date: 02 Aug 08 - 10:31 PM

Well, here is a very interesting radio interview with Ed Mitchell, an Apollo astronaut who walked on the moon for 9 hours on the Apollo 14 mission. He discloses information about alien visitations to the Earth in about the last 60 years, the crash at Roswell, New Mexico in 1947, the resultant coverup at the highest government levels, and the present fairly strong indications that the USA and UK governments may be moving cautiously toward full disclosure. A number of other governments such as Mexico, Brazil, France, and Belgium, for example, have already made such disclosure of their certain knowledge of alien visitations to this planet.

As I say, it's very interesting. And very calm, sensible, and straightforward in presentation. Check the link:

Astronaut discusses history of alien contacts

Now, this won't budge the professional skeptic one iota. Oh, no. ;-) Nothing...short of full disclosure and a complete public admission by the ENTIRE ever-lovin' government and mass media of the USA can ever budge the professional skeptic, because he would rather do anything than change his established opinion...he'd rather die...but...shrug! Who cares? What difference will it make in the end?

I am pleased that some national governments have been honest enough to make disclosure of their knowledge regarding alien visits. I am pleased that Ed Mitchell has spoken publicly on the matter. Good stuff. This is real progress, and it's good to see.

One more step on a long, long journey...and a bigger step in its implications than that first step on the Moon, in my opinion.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Rapparee
Date: 02 Aug 08 - 10:38 PM

I think they come here for a laugh or a bad example -- or both.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Sorcha
Date: 02 Aug 08 - 10:39 PM

I think it's a real pity that Text versions of this kind of thing are not available. I just can't UNDERSTAND the 'noise' I am hearing.

Sorry,
From the Hearing Impaired

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Bill D
Date: 02 Aug 08 - 10:42 PM

Ed Mitchell has been saying this for many years....well spoken, but no more than some of the skeptics.

He 'saw' things that other astronauts in similar situations did not.

Honest men can differ...

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Little Hawk
Date: 02 Aug 08 - 10:43 PM

Don't underrate us, Rapaire. Although we are still a violent and immature civilization in a number of respects, we are also a hell of an interesting bunch of people. If I was out there in a superior technological civilization and looking at the Earth...I'd be very interested! And I would be desirous of some direct contact or at least some careful indirect observation of those remarkable homo sapiens. I'd also be pretty damned careful how I went about it. Not a good idea to be taken prisoner by such people. ;-)

Here's a further interesting video from Edgar Mitchell. Poor film quality, but good content to listen to.

Edgar Mitchell on Roswell

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Little Hawk
Date: 02 Aug 08 - 11:10 PM

He has also stated some very cogent reasons why they would have covered up things like the crash at Roswell.

#1. They did NOT want the Soviets to know anything about it. They felt that if the Soviets were out of the loop, then so much the better...specially if the Americans had some recovered alien equipment to investigate which they could perhaps successfully back-engineer. This could provide the USA with an unbeatable advantage in the Cold War.

#2. They did not know for sure what the aliens' intentions were...or their technical and military capabilities...or whether our military could effectively defend this planet at all if the aliens had hostile intentions. (which it seems quite clear by now that they do not)

#3. No national military under those conditions of deep uncertainty about unknown alien technologies would freely release the information they had about such a situation. It would remain absolute Top Security until they knew for sure that they could handle the situation.

And it has remained so.

#4. Once you have publicly denied something there is a very strong impetus to continue denying it...for obvious psychological (and legal) reasons. This is as true of governments as it is of individuals.

Anyone who tells a string of public lies or evasions about something becomes ever more set on defending his past statements. We've seen enough evidence of that in our lives that I hardly feel I need to elaborate much on the point.   ;-) It is normal for officialdom to maintain a coverup once it has been decided upon at the top levels. It's very difficult for them to publicly reverse such a position.

It is clear from Ed Mitchell's interviews that this is something he has no doubt about (aliens visiting the Earth). He doesn't even get that excited about it, because he regards it as a foregone conclusion by now, and he bases that on the many highly reliable and experienced people he has known and spoken to in the military, the intelligence community, etc. He also regards it as a foregone conclusion that the aliens are not dangerous, and that full disclosure would create little or no panic, but simply a general public acceptance of that which is, frankly, not all that surprising in the light of what's gone down in the past 60 years.

That's how I see it too. Biiiiig surprise? By this time? Hardly. More like finally admitting that the elephant is indeed in the room, and has been for quite some time...and by golly, it's not a rogue elephant, and life as we know it is not about to end. ;-)

You will surely enjoy his videos if they don't trouble your favorite established view of things. You will probably feel that you must discount them, explain them away somehow or pay them little further attention if they do trouble your favorite established view of things.

Unless, that is, you are willing to change an established viewpoint! Some people are.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: John O'L
Date: 02 Aug 08 - 11:23 PM

I suspect the aliens are keeping an eye on us to make sure we don't start screwing up someone else's living space.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: katlaughing
Date: 02 Aug 08 - 11:34 PM

Rapaire, if you haven't read them, you would probably really enjoy "Waiting for the Galatic Bus" and "The Snake oil Wars" by Parke Godwin. Brilliant and funny!

Thanks, LH, for the link.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Art Thieme
Date: 02 Aug 08 - 11:54 PM

I do suggest you read the works of Jerome Clark.

Art

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: CarolC
Date: 03 Aug 08 - 12:52 AM

Astronaut Gordon Cooper has something to say about it, too...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvPR8T1o3Dc

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Fiolar
Date: 03 Aug 08 - 07:48 AM

Folk may or may not believe in "aliens". There are some interesting items in the Bible which may or may not refer to them. One of the ones I found quite intriguing was when Jesus said , quote - "In My Father's House there are many mansions". unquote. It might be that He meant "mansions" to mean "civilisations" and "House" to mean "universe".

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 03 Aug 08 - 08:51 AM

So, as a result of this "amazing" interview I now know that these 'alien visitors' are humanoid.

What I don't know are:

- Where in the Universe they came from.

- How they managed to cross interstellar voids.

- Why they decided to visit us.

- If they have communicated any information and what form(s) the communication process took.

- How far in advance of the human race they are.

- How likely it is that such visitors would display humanoid form.

- If there are any other humanoid and non-humanoid species out there.

- Why, having made such an enormous, and no doubt expensive, effort they have allowed themselves to be rendered invisible by an organisation as relatively puny (in their terms) as the US Government.

I still think that the field of 'UFOlogy', as opposed to (speculative) exobiology, has more to do with religion and paranoia than it does with a genuine interest in alien intelligence.

Oh yes, it's not a question of BELIEF (I'm not religious so I don't consider 'faith', or lack of it, to be relevant), it's a question of EVIDENCE - and anecdotal evidence, even that of an astronaut, is not sufficient to convince me.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Rapparee
Date: 03 Aug 08 - 09:04 AM

I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that life, including intelligent life, exists elsewhere in this galaxy much less in the entire universe. It may very well have visited, even be watching, this insignificant planet located in the boondocks of a wing of a spiral galaxy.

The question is: Why?

A civilization advanced enough to develop an interstellar drive -- and that isn't an easy task (ask any physicist or aerospace engineer) -- would be advanced enough to do any number of other things, including some very unpleasant ones (for us).

Perhaps the Vogan bulldozers are waiting...or "Childhood's End" is correct. I don't have enough evidence to decide.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,wRarrer
Date: 03 Aug 08 - 09:21 AM

It is an expensive vacation, no doubt about it, but it is a once in a lifetime trip and those who have visited here are never the same again.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: 3refs
Date: 03 Aug 08 - 10:41 AM

Little Hawk. Did I hear you recently on Coast to Coast?

Rome(Vatican)has also stated that the existence of E.T's in no way diminishes God.

I wince when I hear of the "Greens", "Grays" and "Reptilians". I guess I'd like them to be more angelic. But I do believe!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: catspaw49
Date: 03 Aug 08 - 11:41 AM

Going on a step further on Rap's post............

All of that is a possibility. The concept that the UFO folks need to grasp is that the likelihood of "humanoid" type life forms is extremely slim.

Life only begins once in any particular place and time, or at least that's the currently accepted theory. As it were, we happened to gel from a specific order of four amino acids as y'all know. But there are far more than four and its likely they exist elsewhere. Maybe somewhere else 2 or 6 or 12 lined up and started something totally unlike us. Or perhaps life started in a way we know nothing of here. I mean it hasn't been all that long ago we discovered how OUR life forms were created, all fairy tales aside.

And if life did begin and develop elsewhere through some other DNA type combination or an unknown means, then it follows that the life form created would be something different than us. Its quite possible the "alien" would share absolutely no traits with us. So maybe they've already come. Maybe they're here now. But consider this, just in case you want to feel even more insignificant............

The alien may be so different that we fail to recognize it as any form of life. Conversely, it may not recognize us either.

The why of their coming would also be beyond our comprehension.......as are most things......like WalksaboutVerse or Josef Mengele..............

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Little Hawk
Date: 03 Aug 08 - 12:00 PM

Hi. No, you didn't hear me on Coast to Coast. ;-) Must've been someone else you heard.

My guess is that there are a number of different groups of aliens capable of interstellar travel (using technologies much different from our own) and that they probably differ quite a bit from one another in physical appearance. It would simply likely that they would, after all. But it's simply my best guess about the matter. The aliens at Roswell, by all accounts, seem to have been basically humanoid in appearance, but smaller than we are, more or less hairless, with rather different eyes, facial features, and so on.

Shimrod - I didn't find the interview "amazing" (though the radio interviewer clearly did). I found that it merely confirmed a bunch of stuff I've considered extremely likely for about the last 4 decades. Not a big surprise to me, but I'm pleased that Mitchell spoke out about it.

In regards to your questions:

"What I don't know are:

- Where in the Universe they came from.

*** No. None of us are in a position to know that. How could we know it? Ed Mitchell said himself that it is not known where they are coming from. ***

- How they managed to cross interstellar voids.

*** Same problem. How could we possibly know how they do that? As an analogy, how could some primitive Pacific islanders in a jungle know how one of our modern airliners is able to fly over their islands at 30,000 feet altitude? We know something they don't, correct? The same may be true of other intelligent civilizations in regards to us. ****

- Why they decided to visit us.

*** Because we're here and they can! (grin) Look, if you can go somewhere, you do. We humans have gone just about everywhere conceivable on this planet by now, and we have even made a few short trips beyond it by now for one simple reason. We CAN. Our curiosity does the rest. The desire to explore and make contact is natural. ****

- If they have communicated any information and what form(s) the communication process took.

**** If there is a coverup, then the people engaging in that coverup are the ones who have that information. ****

- How far in advance of the human race they are.

**** If there is a coverup, the people engaging in that coverup are the ones who have (some of) that information. ****


- How likely it is that such visitors would display humanoid form.

**** Who knows? No one here is in any position to have an answer to that question. ****

- If there are any other humanoid and non-humanoid species out there.

**** Who knows? No one here is in any position to have an answer to that question either, but it is an interesting question, for sure. If there is a coverup, the people engaging in that coverup may have some useful information about it. ****

- Why, having made such an enormous, and no doubt expensive, effort they have allowed themselves to be rendered invisible by an organisation as relatively puny (in their terms) as the US Government.

**** They have not allowed themselves to be rendered invisible. Many thousands of people worldwide have had these alien sightings (usually of the vehicles, sometimes of the occupants). I have had at least 2 sightings of my own of what certainly appeared to be alien vehicles. I have met a great many people, including professional pilots, who have had sightings of their own. There have been mass sightings over cities, some of those well documented at the time in the press. A number of prominent politicians and some national leaders have had personal sightings of what they believed were alien craft, and have told the media. At least four national governments (France, Belgium, Brazil, and Mexico) have by now openly admitted to the presence of alien craft that have been sighted by their military.

These guys aren't invisible!!! However, they have clearly not decided to visit us en masse with thousands of vehicles all on the same day all over the entire frikkin' planet in what would amount to an interplanetary invasion.....and I guess that is something you would not be able to call "invisible", isn't it? And they haven't decided to visit you personally, shimrod.

So is a thing you haven't seen yet personally or that hasn't happened on one day EVERYWHERE to be termed "invisible"? Or is it just something you personally haven't seen yet?

The fact that they have not invaded us en masse is interesting. It could indicate any number of things, such as...

1. Maybe we're not all that important to them. We could be interesting...but just not that important. Maybe their visits here are just a minor stop on a long trip to many other places.

2. Maybe they are far better developed in a moral sense than we are...and don't believe in invading and taking over other civilizations!

3. Maybe they don't wish to shock and demoralize our entire society, but would like instead to have open contact when and if our governments are willing to initiate open contact.

4. Maybe they think we're just too dangerous and immature to deal with at the present time.

Now, what you term their "invisibility" is not their invisibility at all. It is an official government policy at the highest levels to pretend they are not there and to get the mass media to cooperate in that pretense. The primary methods of that policy have been:

1. outright denial
2. ridicule of eyewitnesses
3. repitition of phrases like "little green men" in order to trivialize the whole issue and make a joke out of it
4. the deliberate planting of disinformation through promoting various really oddball theories and poorly done hoaxes in order to discredit the entire subject.

These things have been done, I think, because our military and intelligence people at the highest level are genuinely afraid of being confronted with something totally beyond their own capability, and they therefore wish to keep it secret as long as possible. It's natural that they would want to keep it secret. They can't control it. It doesn't mean they're evil...it means that they are typical human beings in a hierarchical structure and they are zealously guarding what they think of as their own security.

*****


I still think that the field of 'UFOlogy', as opposed to (speculative) exobiology, has more to do with religion and paranoia than it does with a genuine interest in alien intelligence.

**** You probably think that mainly because you have not had a sighting. *****

Oh yes, it's not a question of BELIEF (I'm not religious so I don't consider 'faith', or lack of it, to be relevant), it's a question of EVIDENCE - and anecdotal evidence, even that of an astronaut, is not sufficient to convince me.

**** Yes. Evidence. The problem is, you see, that if there is a coverup by the military and the intelligence community....then THEY are the people who have that evidence. Obviously. Who the hell else would be allowed to have it for long? Who came to Roswell, scooped everything up and took it away to some secret location? The military intelligence people. Who gets to see it? Nobody BUT the military intelligence people. That's a closed loop, shimrod.

So how are you, I, or the national media ever going to get to see any of that evidence if it is not released by the military intelligence community? They are the best friend that a skeptic could possibly have. ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 03 Aug 08 - 12:06 PM

Well, aliens have definitely visited the Moon. Ed Mitchell was one of them.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Little Hawk
Date: 03 Aug 08 - 12:16 PM

Right on, McGrath. ;-) I bet if there were any "Moonies" living up there that most of them would not presently believe in either the Apollo missions or Ed Mitchell....not having seen them at the time. It would be discounted as a wild story about...."little white men" Ha! Ha!

And they'd be asking: How did they get here? And why haven't they contacted us since? And how did they cross the void of space? And what likelihood is there that there's anyone else out there who can do something WE can't do??? Naw....couldn't be.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 03 Aug 08 - 12:58 PM

I have an open mind on alien intelligence, I really do!

I will be convinced that such creatures exist when:

- Evidence is published in a peer reviewed scientific journal (rather than broadcast in a rather dubious and uninformative interview on a crappy rock music radio station).

- Some world leader appears before the world's mass media with a real live alien ambassador.

Until such events, or similar, occur I will remain sceptical. And I will continue to harbour doubts over anecdotal evidence or even personal observation of (unidentified) lights in the sky.

Finally, I continue to maintain that UFOlogists are far more interested in quasi-religion and paranoid conspiracy theories than they are in actual aliens.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Ebbie
Date: 03 Aug 08 - 01:16 PM

"- Some world leader appears before the world's mass media with a real live alien ambassador"

You do know, don't you, that the first thing that would happen with that "real live alien ambassador" would be that s/he/it would be incarcerated/isolated/imprisoned for study and analysis. Earth's record isn't clean or trustworthy.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Little Hawk
Date: 03 Aug 08 - 01:50 PM

Correct. The unfortunate alien ambassador would not meet the world's media, he would go straight into a military intelligence lab as Ebbie suggests. This is not a friendly planet. It is a planet filled with fools who are constantly building terrible new weapons and fighting wars against each other.

The world's public, in general, is inclined to be friendly with other races of beings if given half a chance, but they are not in charge of the military intelligence community. It is in charge of itself.

I don't know whether UFOlogists are more interested in "quasi-religion and paranoid conspiracy theories than they are in actual aliens". Some might be. I think what the majority of them are more interested in is finding out more about the various sightings, hypothetical alien craft and occupants thereof. That's what I'm more interested in, but I don't describe myself as a "UFOlogist". I describe myself as an interested person who has had a couple of sightings. Period.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: CarolC
Date: 03 Aug 08 - 03:29 PM

A lot of people are abandoning the study of UFOlogy, and are taking up the subject of "exopolitics" in its place. This is because they have moved past belief and are now working with information given to them by high ranking government people (and formerly high ranking government people) and aviation professionals and scientists.

It is now possible to do graduate studies in exopolitics at McGill University in Montreal.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: gnu
Date: 03 Aug 08 - 03:35 PM

......like WalksaboutVerse or Josef Mengele..............

hahahahahahehehehehehahahahahaaaa... you made me cry this time... hehehehehe

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

"Correct. The unfortunate alien ambassador would not meet the world's media, he would go straight into a military intelligence lab as Ebbie suggests. This is not a friendly planet. It is a planet filled with fools who are constantly building terrible new weapons and fighting wars against each other."

Yes, we are a sinful race and up there in heave .. sorry, outer space, there are angel.., sorry, aliens, who will descend to Earth in their celesti .., sorry, silvery craft - and save us from ourselves.

Sorry, I kept mis-typing there - now where did I put that metal foil, anti-mind-control helmet?

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: CarolC
Date: 03 Aug 08 - 04:11 PM

I think, after it becomes impossible for people to deny any more the existence and presence of life from other planets, all of the people who have been going on and on about tin (metal) foil helmets should be forced to wear one whenever they are in public for the rest of their lives.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: CarolC
Date: 03 Aug 08 - 04:16 PM

I have to correct what I said about McGill. They have a program they are calling exopolitics, but it's actually a part of their arts program and is more related to science fiction in film and television.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 03 Aug 08 - 05:10 PM

About the tin hat brigades.

I don't think they should be ridiculed for believing that there may be intelligent life on other planets. There are possibly trillions of planets. It is quite probable that some have intelligent life.

I don't think that they should be ridiculed for thinking that intelligent life may have the ability to come here. There may be natural laws beyond Einstein's that we have not begun to explore. Its probable that on some of those planets the technology is so advanced that we would be mere termites building our mud mounds in comparison.

I don't think that they should be ridiculed for thinking that such beings would have an interest in our insignificant planet and come here to look around. We study lower forms of life, right down to bacterial and viruses why not they?

I think it gets a little questionable when they link that these alien intelligences are beaming signals into their brains. But who are we to question the techniques of a society so much more advanced.

No what the tin had brigades should be ridiculed for, if they believe in these super-technological beings, is in thinking that the tinfoil would protect them.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Peace
Date: 03 Aug 08 - 05:14 PM

Bush heard messages from God.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 03 Aug 08 - 05:31 PM

>>- Evidence is published in a peer reviewed scientific journal (rather than broadcast in a rather dubious and uninformative interview on a crappy rock music radio station).

There is a problem with this. The media is afraid of ridicule. There is videotape of Cheney saying that he never said that the Iraqis would welcome us with open arms. There is video tape of him making the statement he denies on "Meet the Press". The one and only television program ever to air those tapes back to back? The Daily Show.

I am skeptical about alien visitation. But no Little Hawk, not professionally so. But If I am convinced that they are here. It will much more likely be by direct experience than by professional publication. I'm convinced that on the order of 80% of the general population would have to be convinced before we saw any proof in "Nature", or even "Newsweek"

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 03 Aug 08 - 05:37 PM

"I think, after it becomes impossible for people to deny any more the existence and presence of life from other planets, all of the people who have been going on and on about tin (metal) foil helmets should be forced to wear one whenever they are in public for the rest of their lives."

I think that you are missing the point of my last post. It was satirical in intent.

I have NEVER denied the POSSIBILITY of extra-terrestrial intelligence. I happen to be very interested in such possibilities.

I repeat, I do not believe that UFOlogists are interested in extra-terrestrial intelligence. I believe that they are expressing quasi-religious beliefs and paranoid conspiracy theories.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: CarolC
Date: 03 Aug 08 - 05:48 PM

I guess the question then is when the term "UFOlogist" is used in this context, who is being called a "UFOlogist"? Is it only those who call themselves UFOlogists, or is it intended to refer to anyone who participates in discussions in threads like this one who think it's more likely than not that non-terrestrial life has visited earth? Or, as in the case of at least one participant in this thread, have said they, themself, have seen one or more UFOs?

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Little Hawk
Date: 03 Aug 08 - 06:11 PM

Yes, who the heck are these so-called UFOlogists anyway? I mean who are the ones who advise wearing tinfoil hats. I've never met such a person, but I have met an impressively large number of people who've had an unusual aerial sighting which they strongly suspect was an alien craft. None of them have been advising their friends to wear a tinfoil hat. ;-)

I think the tinfoil hat thing has probably been promoted by the same smartass people who promote the "little green men" cliche all the time...not genuine researchers or UFOlogists, but sewers of ridicule and deliberate disinformation intended to help discredit the entire field of alien inquiry...or just plain smartasses, period.

I don't use the term "UFO" anymore. I call them "AFOs". A UFO can, after all, be a bird, a balloon, an unusual cloud formation, an unidentified airplane, anything at all really that someone fails to identify. An AFO, well, that's something a bit more specific.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 03 Aug 08 - 06:17 PM

I don't know about aliens visiting planet earth, but here's one that left it back in 1993 and the place hasn't been quite the same since...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsKDbuCsTkk

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Little Hawk
Date: 03 Aug 08 - 06:24 PM

Cool. ;-) Well, I don't care for that sort of jazz music style too much, but I do enjoy hearing his philosophical perspectives. I see that the man has a real tinfoil hat too. He must be one of the very, very few to adopt such headgear.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 03 Aug 08 - 06:40 PM

Wasn't all this settled in 1970?

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: CarolC
Date: 03 Aug 08 - 06:41 PM

I don't think that's tin foil. I think it's gold lame and sequins.

The guy who introduced him has scary hair.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 04 Aug 08 - 04:42 AM

Wasn't all this settled in 1970?

Thanks for that link! Classic stuff. I especially loved the bogus South Sea Islanders and their straw aeroplanes! I wonder, is this sort of apocryphal anthropology still current in the UFO community? And to what extent is the Extra Terrestrial UFO Hypothesis informed by the belief in Ancient Astronauts?

Keep watching the skies!

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 04 Aug 08 - 04:53 AM

I have an open mind on Alien Intelligence - Military and Political Intelligence, however, is another matter...

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

"Yes, who the heck are these so-called UFOlogists anyway?"

Check the tin-foil hat for fit, LH!

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 04 Aug 08 - 05:12 AM

AFOs?

Awful Freaking Observations?

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Stu
Date: 04 Aug 08 - 06:23 AM

UFO researchers have actually contributed in an indirect way to some useful scientific speculation - their cataloguing of lights in the sky has led some geologists to believe that tectonic forces might be generating some of these 'earth lights' ( . . . or UFO's), and ball lightning is a common electrical phenomenon that has been added to the list of possible causes for UFO sightings.

My favourite theory is some are unknown species of animals living in the atmosphere which are visible under certain circumstances, have a look here and here. The best is the space worm filmed by the bald astronaut whose name escapes me.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,freda
Date: 04 Aug 08 - 07:48 AM

LH, you mention other governments which have formally acknowledged UFOs m any further info on this?

freda (feeling very alien in taiwan airport, filling in time til my connecting flight home)

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Rapparee
Date: 04 Aug 08 - 10:41 AM

Spaw is absolutely correct: the development of life elsewhere probably did NOT follow the same path as on Earth. For example, silicon/oxygen instead of carbon/oxygen is possible, the problem being the excretion of SiO2, a solid we call "sand", instead of CO2, a gas; this is not insuperable however. There are other possibilities as well: fluorine, chlorine, and other reactive gases plus a solid (although I wouldn't want to visit with a fluorine-based life form!).

We conceive of "aliens" in our own image, man or "monster". They may be completely beyond anything we can conceive, just as we may be beyond their conception.

I've long thought it would be interesting if all intelligence evolved at roughly the same rate and achieved space flight at roughly the same time....

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: quokka
Date: 04 Aug 08 - 11:57 AM

wonder how a meeting between Ed Mitchell and the people who think the moon landings were faked, would go... love to be a fly on THAT wall...maybe that deserves a new thread! LOL

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: CarolC
Date: 04 Aug 08 - 12:27 PM

They met with Gordon Cooper and he kicked them out. Literally.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Little Hawk
Date: 04 Aug 08 - 01:40 PM

It's my understanding, Freda, that France, Belgium, Brazil, and Mexico have officially acknowledged incidents involving what they assume to to alien craft, but I don't have a whole lot of information on that, just a snippet or two from a couple of those interviews with Edgar Mitchell. I know that there were some remarkable sightings in Mexico in the last couple of decades and that the Mexican Air Force was involved and got a good look at what they assumed had to be alien vehicles (in flight). Not being a UFOlogist, I can't offer any more details about it at the moment. ;-) This is not a fulltime pursuit of mine, just one of a great variety of interests, that's all.

I guess try a Google search for "UFO" + "Mexico"...etc...and you might find some interesting stuff.

******

Spaw's suggestion that another form of life might differ from us so much that both we and they didn't even recognize each other AS life was an interesting one. It's occurred to me too. For instance, what if you had a form of life for whom time was very different? Suppose they had a lifetime of 50,000 years, but to us they appeared like a rock? We would never see them move. They would never see us move, because we move too fast for them to see. ;-D In a case like that you would sure never have any mutual awareness, would you? And what if there were beings living at a different frequency, such that they were like phantasms to us, and we were like phantasms to them? Again, no real possibility of any direct contact. Now let's make it really gross...let's say that these phantasmal beings looked a lot like the things in the comic Cheech Wizard, and there was one particularly egotistical one that walked around all the time with a huge hat concealing his features, f*cked the females of his world constantly and indiscriminately like a deranged Billy Goat, and bullied and dominated all the other males of his race! If this were the case, then I submit that being unable to make contact with those beings would be a very good thing.

Yo, ho, ho, and a bubble of gum. ;-D

*****

Von Daniken's movie is still fun to watch. He was one of those people who is so in love with his theory that he wants to make everything in the world fit into it! As such, he tends to take it considerably too far, but he still might have been onto something. I think there's a very good chance that if aliens are visiting us now (and I think they are) that they have also visited us many times in the remote past. The human race may have had a great deal more interaction with aliens over the past 50,000 years than our historians suspect...or they may not have...I can't say. But it's certainly an interesting field of inquiry.

The human race may even have some genetic origins from entirely outside this planet, and homo sapiens may be an intergalactic speicies, not something which originated here. Now, wouldn't that put a different light on things? It wouldn't have to all go back to a dusty old set of bones in the Olduvai Gorge any longer. It would be a much bigger picture than that.

These are all possibilities. To simply laugh and reject them out of hand without further inquiry is to demonstrate that deep down you have a solidly religious belief of some kind, a faith which you don't want questioned by anybody....and you have picked up that faith from the secular authorities whose word you decided to worship as if it was the final word on the subject. (Priests don't just come in robes...they come in white lab coats too.)

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Art Thieme
Date: 04 Aug 08 - 01:43 PM

Don't simply dismiss UFOlogists. They have done a fine job compiling data that has been claimed over the years. Judgments and conclusions are few. Only is what is, what some say occurred, and how it might look after seeing what is there.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Little Hawk
Date: 04 Aug 08 - 01:49 PM

And to put another way, don't judge a shipment of several hundred good apples on the basis of a handful that have a worm or a bruise.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Art Thieme
Date: 04 Aug 08 - 01:52 PM

I admire UFOLOGIST Jerome Clark a lot. Look seriously into his exhaustive volumes THE UFO BOOK---=ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL

More than that, he is a serious multi-published critic of folk, folklore and all our music -- with important and serious observations.

Art Thieme

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.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Stu
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 03:43 PM

"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."

This constant belittlement of anyone whose view challenges yours demonstrates your arguments are based on speculation, supposition, fallacy and hearsay. You seem to have brushed away my opinion, which is based on the current evidence science presents to us. I will change my opinion if empirical evidence is brought to light that would enable me to alter my opinion according to the facts. The facts presented in my post were made by highly qualified palaeontologists and (according to current understanding) give us insight into the way natural selection works and the role chance plays in the development of life.

With one breath everyone's saying there can't be any such thing as life we can't recognise and in the next post they're discussing why Greys have no bollocks, and then I'm getting lectured for trying to engage in a bit of meaningful discussion about the possibilities for extraterrestrial life but no-ones interested.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: CarolC
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 04:18 PM

Is the way our scientists envision the evolutionary process still a theory, or has it been proven as fact?

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 04:19 PM

>>With one breath everyone's saying there can't be any such thing as life we can't recognise and in the next post they're discussing why Greys have no bollocks, and then I'm getting lectured for trying to engage in a bit of meaningful discussion about the possibilities for extraterrestrial life but no-ones interested.

I'm pretty sure that everyone you are talking to is familiar with theories of evolution. I don't know if they prove one way or another what would happen on another planet. I think that in evolution, to some degree at least, form follows function. Certainly this ...

>>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.<<

is partly in response to what you are saying. If man were to evolve in space, or more likely to genetically optimize himself for space he would wouldn't need a large butt. Traveling as far as they do, why would our theoretical aliens pack a large trunk that clearly is not needed in low gravity ;-)

By the way, most of my posts are kinda tongue in cheek. I am just speculating for fun.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: CarolC
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 04:22 PM

I don't think anyone's saying there can't be any such thing as life we can't recognize. I think what's being said is that the possibility of life we can't recognize doesn't preclude the possibility of life that we could recognize.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 04:31 PM

No, stigweard has that part mostly right. I am basically saying that we basically have all the tools to recognize life as science defines it.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Little Hawk
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 04:31 PM

Well, I've always been quite interested in the current evidence science presents to us, stigweard. No problem there.

I'm also interested in what further possibilities lie beyond the evidence we have managed to find so far, that's all.

I've seen enough quite believable info by now about AFO sightings (including mass sightings over some cities) to consider it pretty much a certainty that some of them are real and are alien. I don't find the science community being too helpful in bringing empirical evidence to light about it, though...mainly, I think, because such evidence is being held in secret at a high government level, and the science community is remaining mum (on orders). Until it is openly released to the general public you won't have the science community commenting on any of that stuff publicly.

That is the problem. It isn't that the evidence isn't there, it's that it's not being officially presented to the public by the people who are holding it.

And from their point of view they obviously have what they think are very good reasons for maintaining that level of security.

Now when the occasional person in the professional realm talks, as Edgar Mitchell has done, and he's someone with strong credibility, the powers that be figure..."Well, he's still only one guy. How many people will hear what he says and remember it? And how many will believe it? And how will he be able to prove it? He won't be able to. Therefore, why should we worry? The coverup will remain effective as long as we don't release the empirical evidence we have. We are therefore still in control."

That's how it works. Dead simple. Just don't release the empirical evidence. Hold it in a government lab somewhere and deny, deny, deny. That's all it takes to maintain a coverup, because, stigweard, there are millions of people like you who won't believe it until they see the empirical evidence.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Stu
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 04:47 PM

"That's all it takes to maintain a coverup, because, stigweard, there are millions of people like you who won't believe it until they see the empirical evidence."

But what is the alternative?

I'm sticking to dinosaurs.

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

I don't know why someone can't believe in dinosaurs and also accept the possibility that there can be humanoid types of life forms that could have arisen from contexts that did not have dinosaurs.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 05:07 PM

Little Hawk,

You don't have any scientific evidence of AFOs. You may have hearsay and testimony, but you do not have any reproducible experiments or observations.

Even if there was a ship with little green men parked on your lawn firing "shut up barking" beams at your wiener dog and they told you that they were from alpha century, you would still not have scientific evidence that they actually were aliens. All you would have is their word for it. For all you know they could be some very eccentric folks who grew up next to a superfund site in New Jersey.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Little Hawk
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 05:11 PM

The alternative, stigweard? Well, we all have to simply wait for whatever it is that will convince us on an individual basis...and we have to wait, of course, for the empirical evidence.

I've seen enough evidence by now to convince me, but you haven't, and that's okay. I don't have a problem with that. I am just as eager to see the irrefutable empirical evidence as you are, I assure you. I yearn for it. I really hope that before I die such undeniable empirical evidence will be seen by the whole world...but it may not be.

There are a lot of things like that which I hope for.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Donuel
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 05:52 PM

Art
With advanced 3rd or 4th generation light intensifying binoculors you are able to see more than satillites on linear tracks, you will see the classic manuvers of lights that are classicly attributed to ufo phenomena.
This is an every night phenomenon that is so ubiquious as to blow your mind.

Its like instant gratification for people who have never had a ufo experience up close but would appreciate a new experience.

People realize that technology isn't cheap so I bet people would pay an admission fee to see for themselves.

I seriously encourage people to see for themselves.
Let people judge for themselves what they are seeing.

The only real obstacle are clouds.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 12:05 AM

Obama quizzed on Roswell Aliens

Its the third bit. He answers it well.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Donuel
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 01:19 AM

Bush waving at aliens W waving

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Paul Burke
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 03:52 AM

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.

Not enough imagination used here. How could intelligent life get by with less than eight eyes, in four sets covering different wavelengths? How can you test the chemical properties of what you come into contact with without chemoceptors on the ends of your tentacles? How can you do any task without at least four arms (this one is utterly real)? How can you communicate without magnetic field sensors and a modulating field generator? How did you ever evolve without a means of telling what's going on behind you? How can life exist surrounded by all that corrosive gaseous oxygen and hot molten dihydrogen oxide?

Even here on Earth we have animals with many eyes and none, that can sense ultra- violet and infra- red, with electrical generators and receptors, with magnetic senses, with better eyes than us (octopuses and squid), with alternative manipulative appendages (octopuses and squid again, and elephants), that can't live without poisonous hydrogen sulphide in almost- boiling water, that have visible light generators, that rupture if brought to ordinary pressure....

We recognise humans as intelligent (though until recently not all humans), but you can't extrapolate from a sample of one.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Stu
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 05:45 AM

"I don't know why someone can't believe in dinosaurs and also accept the possibility that there can be humanoid types of life forms that could have arisen from contexts that did not have dinosaurs."

I can accept the possibility there are humanoid life forms, it's just that the chances of it happening once are infinitesimally small, so the chances of it happening twice are even more remote. As for humanoids arising from contexts that did not have dinosaurs, that is utterly irrelevant, as the body plan for modern vertebrates was fixed long before anything with a backbone heaved itself onto the land for the first time.

I believe in dinosaurs because I go and dig them up, prepare and identify their bones myself. I know world-class palaeontologists who are on the cutting edge of discovery about these incredible animals. As I sit here typing this I am surrounded by solid evidence for the existence of dinosaurs.

I believe in UFOs because I saw one and the sighting was verified by the local airport, but I have no evidence one way or another as to what it was - I simply know it was there (of course, I have speculated for years to myself what it might have been).

I can see we're going to have some sort of alien aparthied in the future; if you don't have two arms, hands, eyes, ears and one mouth and nose you're not going to be considered 'humanoid' and somehow inferior. If you've got none of these attributes and eat rocks then you're right out of it - shades of the Horta here!

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Little Hawk
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 10:56 AM

"I can accept the possibility there are humanoid life forms, it's just that the chances of it happening once are infinitesimally small, so the chances of it happening twice are even more remote."

They are? How do you figure that? You're merely making a rather odd and arbitrary assumption when you say that...an assumption which proceeds from a specific (and popular) tradition in our present scientific culture.

I don't think we have any way of really knowing what the chances are of something occurring until we know all the relevant factors that are involved.

To know all the relevant factors we would have to know about everything in the whole Universe, not just about everything on this one planet here.

And we don't even know about everything on this one planet.

Therefore, I submit that we are in no real position to offer any certainty whatsoever on the chances of humanoid forms occurring once, twice, or any other number of times. To think we are is just whistling in the wind.

We make unfounded assumptions (because they fit some pet theory). They soon become commonly accepted assumptions. After that people start imagining that they are not just assumptions, but virtual certainties. That's where faith comes in.

*****

It's impossible NOT to believe in "UFOs", unless it's impossible for anyone to fail to identify some flying object that they see. ;-) That's why I don't use the term UFO much any longer. I use the term AFO instead. "Alien Flying Object" ...meaning something which definitely appears to be an intelligently piloted machine, and one NOT of Earthly origin...not something which is simply an "unidentified object in the sky".

******

"I can see we're going to have some sort of alien aparthied in the future; if you don't have two arms, hands, eyes, ears and one mouth and nose you're not going to be considered 'humanoid' and somehow inferior."

In truth, stigweard, such alien aparthied would be virtually inevitable...just as it is inevitable that most people will be nicer to good looking people than they are to "ugly" people. We are far more likely to initiate friendly and useful communication with someone who fairly closely resembles us than with something that looks like a pile of spaghetti with some waving tentacles and is the size of a greyhound bus... (grin)

It may not be fair....but it's common sense that people would react that way.

However, there might be a possible exception to the humanoid rule, I suppose. What if some aliens showed up who looked like cute little fluffy space bunnies? Well, I can see people being quite inclined to get friendly with such unscary looking aliens as that. In such a case, the humanoid looking aliens might actually find themselves at a cultural disadvantage as compared to the Space Bunnies. Doonesbury did a comic strip episode once along that very sort of theme. An alien being was wreaking havoc on the Earth, but when put on trial in the US Congress he was largely forgiven for it because he was so cute and lovable looking...so "telegenic". It was a satire directed at Oliver North.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Paul Burke
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 11:07 AM

Therefore, I submit that we are in no real position to offer any certainty whatsoever on the chances of humanoid forms occurring once, twice, or any other number of times. To think we are is just whistling in the wind.


Nonsense LH. Just consider that there are vastly more ways of not being non- humanoid than there are of being humanoid. Most creatures on Earth are not humanoid, and there's no evidence that their different shape was the reason why they didn't develop intelligence.

And that's even before you consider differences in environment. Humans are humanoid, not because it's a necessary part of being "intelligent", but because our environment- the 4 billion year history of our environment- shaped us that way. And, on the way, we (or our ancestors and the other creatures) shaped the environment. The chance of that being replicated elsewhere, from a different starting point, are vanishing.

"All" that's required to develop intelligence is the ability to sense the environment, and to respond to it actively. Plus a body plan (if there IS a body that we could recognise) that allows a sufficiently complex processing mechanism to make that response complex. Plus a lot of luck (like primates surviving the Ice Ages). Plus, if you are the religious sort, the Grace of God to provide you with a soul...

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: CarolC
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 11:10 AM

I don't have a problem with the idea that non-terrestrial intelligences could be non-humanoid in form. But I disagree that any non-terrestrial intelligences must be non-humanoid in form. Or even that it's unlikely for non-terrestrial intelligences to be humanoid in form

Think about how evolution fills niches in different parts of the earth. In Australia there are marsupials (a very primitive form of mammal that have evolved along a different evolutionary path for more than 65 million years since leaving South America before the continents drifted apart). But they evolved along fairly similar lines as mammals in certain respects according to the ecological niche they fill. They're different from mammals from other continents, but they're also very similar in many ways. Function does indeed seem to dictate form to a very large extent.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 11:14 AM

>>>if you don't have two arms, hands, eyes, ears and one mouth and nose you're not going to be considered 'humanoid'

You are the dinosaur guy, but I would call that much classification maybe even exobiological taxonomy

>>and somehow inferior.

Certainly inferior in some limited ways, the ones with no ears or mouth are bound to be harder to talk to.

Then again the ones who communicate by reading our thoughts and placing their thoughts directly into our brains might be considered in some ways superior.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Donuel
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 11:16 AM

If a civilization anywhere EVER evolved to a class 2 civilization it becomes probable for a distribution of intelligent lifeforms.

Since we are not even a class 1 human race yet, it is perfectly normal to err on the side of the impossibility of a class 2 network of life - let alone a class 4 civiliation.



The class of civilization is based on the ability to progressively capture and control huge amounts of directed energy.


One of the greatest trips I would like to take is to go back in time when Mars was but a oceanic moon to its larger home planet Mu and then watch exactly what destroyed Mu. Was it the incoming Venus on its way to an inner orbit or did Mu do a mini black hole experiment that suffered a china syndrome and sink to the center of Mu and implode, or was it an asteroid... Whatever it was, both Mars and Earth suffered alot of impacts and debris damage from that nearby cosmic event that has left traces of the mystery.

To deduce what happened at this point is possible --- in priciple

But it would be like making a stick figure in a tub of water with food coloring, letting it diffuse and the water dry out....then step by step go backward with careful calculations.

TO me it would be better to make a time machine and see for myself.
The problem seems to be I could never tell you what I saw.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 11:21 AM

Donuel,

You certainly enjoyed that lecture. ;-)

If you go back in time, can't you just leave a time capsule? You could draw stick figures inside the Pyramids.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Little Hawk
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 11:44 AM

Paul Burke, I think that everything has a soul....not just human beings. I think that a body is built by a pre-existing soul...that is, a pre-existing and non-physical bundle of highly organized spiritual intelligence. I don't think that life spontaneously arose out of inert matter somehow by mere happenstance, I think that inert matter itself was fashioned into living forms BY pre-existing life itself. (spiritual life) And, no, I am not talking about the supposed Christian Father God figure up on his throne stretching out a divine hand when I say that. I'm talking about LIFE itself. Life IS God, as far as I'm concerned.

I am saying that until we know accurately the condition and nature of all life throughout the Universe rather than just the biological life on this planet, we are in no position to estimate the chances of humanoid life occurring once....twice...three times...or 50,000 times.

The great conceit of humanity is always this: They think they know way more than they do. Look at the scientific and popular notions of any past century, and you will see this folly of human delusive grandeur. People are self-preening know-it-alls who think they have reality all figured out, but their ruling scientific or religious orthodoxies are always overthrown in short order proving how little they really knew.

The same will happen to the ruling orthodoxies of our present civilization (which are mostly scientfic and technical orthodoxies), and those are the orthodoxies that your assumptions and stigweard's rest upon. I know they're all you have to rest upon.... ;-) But I am unimpressed. They are not enough.

I have no objection at all to the notion of non-humanoid aliens, by the way. It seems very likely that there would be some such aliens. If, however, credible witnesses to various AFO sightings have seen some humanoid aliens then I am not going to reject their testimony merely because I have some crackpot pet theory of my own that says "Oh, the chances against any aliens being humanoid are very, very high!"

That's bullshit. It's just an argument of convenience which jumps into your mind, because you would rather not believe that anyone has seen any aliens, period, and you're looking for any excuses you can think of to pooh-pooh various eyewitness accounts.

In so doing you are engaging in a pointless and unproductive side issue that has little or nothing to do with the subject at hand. It doesn't matter whether the aliens are humanoid or not! It matters whether they really exist or not and whether they are visiting here or not.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 12:12 PM

My take on it is this.

Its like the monkeys and the typewriters. You know, odds are a million monkeys on a million typewriters will produce at some point the entire works of Shakespeare. Of course the logical conclusion from that is that they would no doubt produce lesser authors like Tom Clancy and    Ann Rice at a much higher rate. Imagine how many times they would produce "Johnathon Livingston Seagull" or the words to "Bo Diddly" or "Louie Louie".

Think of the odds of them typing any English sentence as the odds of a universe of trillions upon trillions of other planets evolving sapient life. Since form follows function, think of the odds of them producing some work you recognize as the odds for humanoid life. But the odds of HUMAN life evolving here and on another planet would be on a par with the monkeys typing out the complete works of Shakespeare, the OED and the King James Bible, three times in a row.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Stu
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 12:15 PM

"some crackpot pet theory of my own that says "Oh, the chances against any aliens being humanoid are very, very high!"

Much as I'd like to take the credit for this theory, it's not mine. A simple study of the processes of natural selection and evolution might well lead you to the same conclusion. We can't know how many forms of life there are in the universe, and even attempts to calculate the figure have been the subject of some debate (the Drake equation has been questioned recently - as it should be).

"That's bullshit. It's just an argument of convenience which jumps into your mind, because you would rather not believe that anyone has seen any aliens, period, and you're looking for any excuses you can think of to pooh-pooh various eyewitness accounts."

Er, easy now, no need to get leery - this is a debate right? This argument hasn't jumped in my mind for the sole purpose of disagreeing with you LH, I've spent time looking at the facts and I've thought about it. I have taken an interest in this subject since I was a boy when I would have agreed with you, but opinions change. I keep an open mind on whether anyone has seen aliens, but I'll decide for myself how valid any of these testimonies are myself, thanks.

The small amount of learning I've done in my main field of interest outside work (in geology and palaeontology) taught me the basic scientific principle of question everything. Reach your own conclusions based on reviewing the available evidence and literature and interpret the data as honestly as possible.

Perhaps I'll go - by not agreeing I'm obviously upsetting you.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Stu
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 12:17 PM

"Imagine how many times they would produce "Johnathon Livingston Seagull" or the words to "Bo Diddly" or "Louie Louie""

Excellent Jack - your post gave me a belly laugh!

And a well illustrated point to boot!

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Paul Burke
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 12:42 PM

Think about how evolution fills niches in different parts of the earth. In Australia there are marsupials (a very primitive form of mammal that have evolved along a different evolutionary path for more than 65 million years since leaving South America before the continents drifted apart). But they evolved along fairly similar lines as mammals in certain respects according to the ecological niche they fill. They're different from mammals from other continents, but they're also very similar in many ways. Function does indeed seem to dictate form to a very large extent.

Good point Carol. Convergent evolution has produced strikingly similar forms filling given niches in widely divergent places and times. The plesiosaurs compare with cetaceans and for that matter sharks, rhinos resemble triceratops, and so on. But really all these are starting from a common body plan- vertebrates with a limb at each corner- that was set as long ago as the development of the chordates, and is really a contingency of our planet.

Certainly aerodynamic and hydrodynamic shapes will necessarily be moulded by the physics, but the moulding will be done on the basis of whatever basic foundation has evolved. There's nothing magical or even optimal about 2 legs and 2 arms, and arthropods find 6, 8, or many limbs work well. I could do with extra arms now and then...

And there's nothing necessary about bilateral symmetry, look at starfish, though having developed it has certain advantages in retrospect.

There may be other, secondary, considerations, like the size limits (in our environment) on arthropods, due to mechanical considerations and the need to grow by shedding the exoskeleton at intervals.

By the way, there's nothing "primitive" about marsupials.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 12:59 PM

>>>By the way, there's nothing "primitive" about marsupials.

So you say! You ever try to serve high tea to a possum?

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: CarolC
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 01:03 PM

Marsupials are a primitive as compared to placental mammals. Which is another way of saying that marsupials are a primitive form of mammal.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 01:09 PM

>>>There's nothing magical or even optimal about 2 legs and 2 arms, and arthropods find 6, 8, or many limbs work well. I could do with extra arms now and then.

This is a very old game in science fiction and I love to play it.

Imagine an Arthropod or octapus evolving to the point that he could build a space ship.

His kind would have to develop metallurgy, he's need a brain big enough for Einsteinian physics and beyond. He would need to be a tool user. He couldn't even wield a hammer with lobster claws. Is refining of metal and alloy creation even possible under water?

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: CarolC
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 01:12 PM

As I've said before, there's no reason to suppose that all sentient (or even sapient) life has a humanoid form.

But considering the infinite nature of the universe, there's no reason to suppose that earth humans are the only humanoid form of intelligent life, either. Or even to suppose that earth humans are the only humanoid form that is likely

And people are also not considering the possibility that our genetics have been interfered with by intelligent humanoid beings somewhere along the way. It's entirely possible that the first humanoid form arose in another part of the universe, and has been traveling around the cosmos "spreading their seed" so to speak.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: beardedbruce
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 01:16 PM

See Nivens and the Pak (Ringworld, et al). A better explaination than most as to human development, and post-reproductive effects.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Stu
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 01:37 PM

Information on Greys: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greys#Psychological_perspectives


I know this won't sway anyone, but this site has some interesting observations on the subject of alien life: http://www.astro-tom.com/technical_data/alien_life.htm.

Good job they're here - we'd have a bugger of a time finding them otherwise.

Having read through it I've decided I largely agree with most of it, so I now rest my case M'lud.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 01:46 PM

The Pak are a fun concept but they are hardly an explanation for human evolution. In those books he is saying that the symptoms of old age, loss of hair, arthritis, loss of teeth etc are actually poorly formed steps in the transformation to the Protector phase. Of course this ignores that we see similar symptoms of age in most animals and in pretty much all mammals.

Your point is well taken about Ringworld though.

Larry Niven is by far my favorite creator of Aliens. The Jotok are the closest example to the type of alien Paul Burke is talking about and the backstory of Ringworld parallels what Carol was just talking about.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: CarolC
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 01:46 PM

I think using Greys as one's point of departure is a bit of a straw man, since not everyone who says they have seen non-terrestrial humanoid life forms have said what they saw were those described as Greys.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Stu
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 01:47 PM

"Marsupials are a primitive as compared to placental mammals. Which is another way of saying that marsupials are a primitive form of mammal"

Sorry - one last thing.

That's a misunderstanding CarolC; marsupials are not primitive mammals, they're just different. Placental mammals didn't evolve from marsupials, the fossil evidence indicates they evolved alongside them towards the end of the Mesozoic.

Monotremes, the third family of mammal (like the Platypus) were also though of as primitive but actually branched out from the mammalian line earlier and are as 'advanced' as us arrogant humans like to think are.

No more or less primitive.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: beardedbruce
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 01:51 PM

JtS,

My comment was in support of CarolC'S

"And people are also not considering the possibility that our genetics have been interfered with by intelligent humanoid beings somewhere along the way. It's entirely possible that the first humanoid form arose in another part of the universe, and has been traveling around the cosmos "spreading their seed" so to speak. "

I am aware that "The Pak are a fun concept but they are hardly an explanation for human evolution."

Though it would be difficult to PROVE that the Pak are NOT the cause of human evolution.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Little Hawk
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 01:51 PM

Hey, stigweard...not to worry! There is no reason for you to go. I'm actually enjoying this whole discussion thoroughly. I may sound rather zealous and very serious when you read the words I've typed on a computer screen, but I'm actually having fun here. I cracked up when Jack wrote that stuff about how often the monkeys might come up with the words to "Louie, Louie".

I don't know what the odds are for or against humanoid life occurring more than once here or in the Universe. I don't think anyone else does either. I don't think there's any sure way of calculating such odds or even guessing at them. I think it's all just conjecture. People are always talking about "what the odds are" of this or that thing happening, but I don't think they usually have a clue what the odds really are...and in the end, "the odds" may have nothing to do with it.

*****

Paul Burke, I'm glad you said that "there's nothing "primitive" about marsupials".

Right on! Marsupials have been getting grossly unfair treatment in the press for years (specially from insensitive people like Jack the Sailor who marginalize anyone who can't meet proper form at a tea party) and it's time they were allowed the full dignity and respect they deserve! ;-) Chongo Chimp's campaign for president of the USA has put equal rights for Marsupials front and center. (He'll do anything to scrounge up a few thousand more votes. Well, almost anything...)

*****

Carol said... "And people are also not considering the possibility that our genetics have been interfered with by intelligent humanoid beings somewhere along the way. It's entirely possible that the first humanoid form arose in another part of the universe, and has been traveling around the cosmos "spreading their seed" so to speak."

Right. The same possibilities have occurred to me. I think it is quite possible that human genes have some off-planet sources mixed in by this time...and that homo sapiens was in fact a migrant to this world in very ancient times. The primitive ape-like skeletal and fossil remains that have been found may be our ancestors....or they may not be...or they may have been a part of our ancient genetic line, but not the only part of it. There may be off-world genetic lines included as well.

We may all be the sons and daughters of ancient immigrants to this planet. If so.... (grin) ...you can throw most of your present conventional ideas about human evolution on planet Earth out the window.

The aliens who I think are visiting us may be our own very distant relatives. And that could be why they're interested in how we're handling things here.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: beardedbruce
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 01:53 PM

LH- crosspost.


GMTA

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 01:56 PM

>>>Good job they're here - we'd have a bugger of a time finding them otherwise.

I am with you on that. If Einstein's is the last word on interstellar travel, it will be a very lonely universe for humanity.

He was a real spoil sport for dreamers. It would take on the order of 80,000 years to get to the nearest star at the escape velocity of our solar system. Numbers like that would make exploring a challenge.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Little Hawk
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 01:58 PM

Who are "the Pak", BB?

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

"It would take on the order of 80,000 years to get to the nearest star at the escape velocity of our solar system."


If one assumes a constant 1 g acceleration ( Bussard Ramjet, well withing today's design margins ( Article in 1970's about how to turn aa metalic asteroid into one, using 1970's tech, but NOT cheap) one can get to the nearest star in about 10 years, I think ( turnaround at halfway point, 4.5 LY distance, time dilation for crew at higher speeds) Why would one stay at the escape velocity???

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pak_Protector

Or read Niven's scifi...

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Little Hawk
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 02:09 PM

BB, I saw vehicles in the sky that could do flying maneuvers which utterly defied any of the known and accepted information we presently have about acceleration, deceleration, the effect of inertial forces on a moving object (and its occupants), friction with the atmosphere...and stuff like that.

I think there are possibilities out there that neither Einstein nor or present scientific community were or are aware of....forms of travel that are completely unknown to us. I think so because of what I saw.

I think that people from other stars would not bother coming this far if it took them a ridiculously long amount of time to do it.

After all, we wouldn't bother to, would we?

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: beardedbruce
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 02:09 PM

"In Protector, Niven explains that humans (and all of Earth's primates) are descended from a colony of Pak breeders that were stranded on Earth 2.5 million years ago. The protectors that built the colony ship died when their Tree-of-Life crops failed (due to a lack of thallium in the soil). The original Pak Breeder population (called Homo Habilis) bred and mutated wildly, evolving into modern humans as well as all other Earth primates (such as gorillas, chimpanzees, and orangutans). All Terran descendents of the Pak could transform into the Protector stage if exposed to Tree-of-Life root (or the symbiotic virus it contains).

.....

Niven has stated in other writings that he invented the Protectors as a thought experiment to explain the common effects of aging on humans, and to create a fictional evolutionary explanation for human's long lives after females have passed reproductive age. Accordingly, most of the positive attributes of Protectors are based on negative human aging effects: sore joints, poor circulation, wrinkled skin, lack of sex drive, and rotting teeth are all turned to advantage during the shift from Breeder to Protector.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: beardedbruce
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 02:15 PM

"I think that people from other stars would not bother coming this far if it took them a ridiculously long amount of time to do it."


At reativistic speeds, time dilation makes it reasonable for ( One-way) trips of only a few decades. Given a longer lifespan, this would NOT rule out any visitors (just bring along the family, or fellow colonists).

Look at what happens if one accelerates at 1 g for a few years. Once one gets near cee, time dilation makes it seem like little time has passed, and one can calculate trips to , say the center of the galaxy taking only a half century ( SHIP time) . Can't stop along the way, though.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Little Hawk
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 02:17 PM

Oh, I agree, it doesn't rule it out. It just makes it fairly unlikely.

Interesting story about the Pak breeders. ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 02:21 PM

>>Why would one stay at the escape velocity?

To conserve fuel.

Is there a working model of a Bussard Ramjet? That technology requires a self sustaining hydrogen fusion reaction contained to the point where it does not melt the ship into plasma. Once you have that, it also requires some sort of magical force field able to overcome the inertia of trillions upon trillions of particles of Interstellar hydrogen at relative velocities of thousands of kilometers per hour and gather them up compress them to fusion temperatures and emit the fusion products out the tailpipe with enough velocity so that their reaction mass would be able to accelerate a very large object.

Its fun to think about but it seems dubious.

Why don't we just buy the type one hyperdrive from the Outsiders. Damn! there is never a starseed around when you need one! ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: beardedbruce
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 02:29 PM

"magical force field"


1. you mean an elctromagetic field, like we are using in the tokamaks for earth-based fusion research?


"Any sufficiently advanced form of technology is indistiguishable from magic" - Clarke's Law

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 02:33 PM

>>At reativistic speeds, time dilation makes it reasonable for ( One-way) trips of only a few decades. Given a longer lifespan, this would NOT rule out any visitors (just bring along the family, or fellow colonists).<<

Lets assume that you are right. I don't think it at all likely that the nearest star system is inhabited with sentient life with technology that superior to us. So lets be very generous and say that they are coming 100 light years instead of four and the trip takes 200 years real time and say 30 years subjective (dilated) time for the crew. For a round trip it would take 400 years. Everyone they know at home would be 400 years older, when they got back. the crew themselves would be 60 years older.

Given that level of sacrifice does anyone else think it unlikely that they would come all the way here to buzz airports and stick probes up hillbillies' butts?

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: beardedbruce
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 02:42 PM

Given constant accel, it would be a lot less time than that for a mere 100 LY.


"So lets be very generous and say that they are coming 100 light years instead of four and the trip takes 200 years real time and say 30 years subjective (dilated) time for the crew. For a round trip it would take 400 years."


http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3aj.html

----------
Another advantage of a constant 1g acceleration is that it would allow the pilot to make very long journeys. To an observer on Earth, such a ship would take hundreds of thousands of years to reach the centre of the galaxy. Thanks to relativistic time dilation, however, the pilot would be only 20 years older on arrival. So, for the pilot, the centre of our galaxy is only 20 years away!

A Science Fiction Dream

Leaving aside the fact that we are not yet able to build fusion engines or sufficiently powerful superconducting coils, the Bussard ramjet sounds at first like an excellent prospect for interstellar propulsion. Unfortunately, there are strong theoretical objections to the principle of the Bussard ramjet.

Fusion as generated on Earth requires deuterium3, which accounts for only about 0.01% of interstellar hydrogen. Fusion in the Sun uses normal hydrogen, but achieving the conditions necessary for that would be very difficult. An optimistic estimate would be that only 1% of the hydrogen would be actually usable as fuel. So in fact much of the propulsive power would be used up slogging through a soup of useless hydrogen.

Also, one of the byproducts of the fusion reaction is neutrons4. Any crew compartment would need extremely heavy shielding against this radiation, adding to the mass of the ship.

Unless these and other serious problems can be addressed, the Bussard ramjet will remain a science fiction concept. Of course, we literally cannot imagine the capabilities of future technology, so the stated objections may eventually seem trivial.

Bussard Ramjets in Science Fiction

Tau Zero by Poul Anderson is the quintessential ramjet story. It also deals extensively with the concept of relativistic time dilation. This is not to say it is a dry, technical book, however. Like all classics of literature, it succeeds because it is, at heart, about people, and because it is a cracking story. It has been called 'the ultimate in hard science fiction' and is strongly recommended to anyone with an interest in the concept of the Bussard ramjet.

Rammer is a short story by Larry Niven. It was later reworked into the opening chapter of the novel A World Out Of Time. The short story is more of a cautionary tale of the unforeseeable consequences of cryonic preservation, and the novel is a fantasy of the far future, but both rely on the concept of the Bussard ramjet in passing. Niven's Known Space stories, particularly Protector, feature extensive use of ramships.

In Star Trek: The Next Generation, the starship Enterprise has 'Bussard collectors' on its warp engine nacelles. They are mentioned explicitly in two episodes, 'Samaritan Snare' and 'Night Terrors'. The technical manual states that they are an emergency fuel collection system only.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A600436

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 02:42 PM

>>"magical force field"
1. you mean an elctromagetic field, like we are using in the tokamaks for earth-based fusion research?<<

No, I mean one powerful enough to engulf thousands, probably millions, of cubic kilometers of space, magnetize the hydrogen and sweep it in, as I said, overcoming mindboggling levels of inertia, without being so powerful that it would not fry every piece of electronics for thousands of miles and without turning the crew quarters into a cancer factory.

Its a cool idea, but to say the least, unlikely.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Little Hawk
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 02:50 PM

"I don't think it at all likely that the nearest star system is inhabited with sentient life with technology that superior to us."

Huh????????? Why? What in the world do you base that supposition on?

"Given that level of sacrifice does anyone else think it unlikely that they would come all the way here to buzz airports and stick probes up hillbillies' butts?"

Yeah! ;-) I think that's highly unlikely. Happy now?

***

To be more serious about it...I think if they are coming here it is not to buzz airports and stick probes up hillbilly's butts. They may be coming here because they are concerned about two specific things:

1. Our recent development of nuclear weapons.
2. Our recent fledgling forays into space.

I would be deeply concerned if I was them. We are potentially very dangerous people.

The number of AFO sightings went up dramatically in the postwar years (after WWII), and they have remained high ever since. The first A-bombs were exploded in 1945. I think there may be a connection, frankly.

There were a good number of aerial sightings during the late war years, by the way...by both Axis and Allied airmen...they saw unexplained craft that were uninterceptable and did not appear anything like our airplanes at all. The Allied pilots called them "Foo-fighters".

Both sides assumed that those were secret weapons belonging to the other side. Both discovered that they were wrong about that when the war ended. Neither side had such vehicles.

In any case, the number of sightings of such unusual vehicles increased greatly from the late 40's...and my feeling is that it was due primarily to their concern about our atomic weaponry and their desire to observe and monitor what the hell we are up to on this planet.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 02:51 PM

>>>Given constant accel, it would be a lot less time than that for a mere 100 LY.

If you assume that they can accelerate past the speed of light, and that there are no diminishing returns, maybe.

Keep in mind that the faster they go, the more fuel it will take to overcome the inertia of acceleration the interstellar hydrogen to the speed of the ship.

Also it should be obvious that they will spend much of the trip acceleration and decelerating. If they traveled at the speed of light the trip would take 100 years. Certainly given all the constraints, their trip would take considerably more than 100 years.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 02:56 PM

>>>From: Little Hawk
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 02:50 PM

"I don't think it at all likely that the nearest star system is inhabited with sentient life with technology that superior to us."

Huh????????? Why? What in the world do you base that supposition on?<<<

I hereby cite Stigweard's Dinosaur evidence, and my monkey story, both of which assume at least a habitable planet. We don't even know if there are planets at all around the closest stars. Believe me, statistically, based on modern science, 100 light years for the nearest intelligent race is being very generous.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: beardedbruce
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 03:00 PM

"If you assume that they can accelerate past the speed of light, and that there are no diminishing returns, maybe.

Keep in mind that the faster they go, the more fuel it will take to overcome the inertia of acceleration the interstellar hydrogen to the speed of the ship.

Also it should be obvious that they will spend much of the trip acceleration and decelerating. If they traveled at the speed of light the trip would take 100 years. Certainly given all the constraints, their trip would take considerably more than 100 years. "


Nope. look at it relativistically:

one accelerates at a constant 1g, until the halfway point, then one flips the motor and deaccelerates to a stop at the destination.

Time dilation ON the Ramjet means that it would only be 20 years to the pilot, going a distance of 60,000- 80,000 LY. Since time is dilated the ( near- lightspeed) portion will cover most of the distance in almost no ellapsed time. (As long as one does NOT slow down to look at things along the way) A longer journey would be even more effective- one could cross half the entire Universe ( about 13 billion LY) in a single human lifetime (70 years). Make it a generation ship, and a few generations could go to the collapse ( if that happens) in a few hundred billion years- but time dilated to a few hunderd years ellapsed on-board)

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: beardedbruce
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 03:05 PM

"Another advantage of a constant 1g acceleration is that it would allow the pilot to make very long journeys. To an observer on Earth, such a ship would take hundreds of thousands of years to reach the centre of the galaxy. Thanks to relativistic time dilation, however, the pilot would be only 20 years older on arrival. So, for the pilot, the centre of our galaxy is only 20 years away!"

The reference frame of the PILOT is the only one that matters- if one can go somewhere in a matter of decades, and one expects to live many decades, it might well be reasonable to travel. Look at soem of the voyages by sail- a WHALING TRIP of several years ( or several) was not considered uncommon, with a lifetime of 70 years total.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Little Hawk
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 03:12 PM

Fine, Jack, but it's still only a guess. The fact is, we don't know for sure if there are any habitable planets around the nearest stars. Correct?

Has anyone considered that other civilizations may have found a form of space propulsion which does not burn any fuel?

Burning fuel is what we are accustomed to now, but it's very probably not the only way of propelling a vessel at high speeds, and there may be a fuel-less method of travelling at speeds in excess of light speed. Just because we think it's impossible does not necessarily mean it is.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: beardedbruce
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 03:12 PM

OK, got the formula...


Of course, as a general rule starships want to slow down and stop at their destinations, not zip past them at 0.9999 of the speed of light. You need a standard torchship brachistochrone flight plan: accelerate to halfway, skew flip, then decelerate to the destination (which makes sense, since such starships will have to be torchships). To use the above equations, instead of using the full distance for d, divide the distance in half and use that instead. Run that through the equations, then take the resulting T or t and double it.

Example: The good scout starship Peek-A-Boo is doing a 1 g brachistochrone for Vega, which is 27 light-years away. Half of that is 13.5 light-years. How long will the journey be from the crew's standpoint (the proper time) ?

T = (c/a) * ArcCosh[a * d / (c2) + 1]
T = (1/1.03) * ArcCosh[1.03 * 13.5 / (12) + 1]
T = 0.971 * ArcCosh[13.9 / 1 + 1]
T = 0.971 * ArcCosh[13.9 + 1]
T = 0.971 * ArcCosh[14.9]
T = 0.971 * 3.39
T = 3.29 years
That's the crew time to the skew flip. The total time is twice this
T = 3.29 * 2
T = 6.58 years


But if you have more mathematical skills than I have, you could easily derive this short cut:

Tt = 1.94 * ArcCosh[dly/1.94 + 1]

where
Tt = Proper Time experienced during a brachistochrone flight (years)
dly = total distance to destination(light-years)

Remember this equation assumes a constant 1 g acceleration.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 03:12 PM

If you look at it relativistically the you ignore my point about their family being hundreds of years only when they get home. Not to mention the danger of hitting some non magnetic object while traveling at a significant fraction of the speed of light. It still remains an awful lot of trouble to go to buzz airports and make circles in cornfields.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 03:19 PM

>>Has anyone considered that other civilizations may have found a form of space propulsion which does not burn any fuel?

Hold on thar amigo!!! Them's fighten words!

Its bad enough trying to get around Einstein. But lets not try to make a liar out of Newton as well!!


LOL!!

Serious answer: Sure people have considered it. In bad science fiction. Or stories about Magic, or Gods.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Stu
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 03:21 PM

"100 light years for the nearest intelligent race is being very generous"

I herby concur with Jack lots.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: beardedbruce
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 03:23 PM

Well, there is some discussion of the basic energy in the fabric of space- but the Bussard Ramjet is something we COULD build with just minor advances and a lot of effort- Might want to do that if we find that the "global warming" is really the sun entering a pre-nova phase.

Nothing new would have to be invented- just a straight engineering problem of scaling up what we presently have.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: beardedbruce
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 03:25 PM

Might want to have a light-sail and launching lasers to get up to speed, though.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 03:28 PM

>>being hundreds of years only when they get home

Corrected their families are hundreds of years older by the time they get home.

And you cannot assume constant 1g acceleration the whole way. As you get closer to C acceleration will get exponentially more difficult.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: beardedbruce
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 03:33 PM

"If you look at it relativistically the you ignore my point about their family being hundreds of years only when they get home."

Why would they go home, if they were short-lived? Colonists, etc. would not need to return home. If they had longer lifetimes it would not matter that they were gone a few hundred. LOTS of SF written about the effects of time-dialted travel on civilizations and people.


"Not to mention the danger of hitting some non magnetic object while traveling at a significant fraction of the speed of light. "

One can always use a large ball of frozen water as a shield ( also useful as emergency fuel for low-speed operations) ( See Clarke et al)




"It still remains an awful lot of trouble to go to buzz airports and make circles in cornfields. "


You are presuming that is what they are doing. What would an ant say about humans- " Seems like a lot of effort just to step on us." Perhaps thay have some pupeose that you are not aware of.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 03:34 PM

>>>the Bussard Ramjet is something we COULD build with just minor advances

I don't think that the required advances would be minor in any way.

Newton's first law and the inverse-square law for electromagnetic force are pretty significant obsticles.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: beardedbruce
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 03:39 PM

"And you cannot assume constant 1g acceleration the whole way. As you get closer to C acceleration will get exponentially more difficult. "


Nope. To the pilot, it will be 1g at all times. Got to look at it relativistically.- His speed will approach cee, but never reach it- and time will slow down as he gets faster. in HIS ( or her) frame, it will be constant acceleration at 1 g, to an observer on Earth it will look like he is traveling just below cee ( need to have the light-cones to see the actual "apparent" velocity, as the light from the moving spacecraft will be both frequency shifted and seen at some time later ( based on distance from the observer.)

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 03:41 PM

>>Why would they go home, if they were short-lived? Colonists, etc. would not need to return home. If they had longer lifetimes it would not matter that they were gone a few hundred. LOTS of SF written about the effects of time-dialted travel on civilizations and people.

Sorry Bruce, you seem to have missed part of the conversation.
We're talking about the alleged aliens visiting Earth in UFOs please note the thread title.

Aside from the behavior of John Tesh and Tom Cruise, I see no evidence of Alien colonization of the Earth.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: beardedbruce
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 03:58 PM

"I don't think that the required advances would be minor in any way. "

Certainly minor compared to a "fuel-less" drive or FTL.

The basic theory is to take a metallic asteroid that is about cylindrical, bore a hole in the long axis, pack it with ice ( from Saturn's rings probably) and seal both ends. Make a large mirror ( use the material you will later make a light sail of) and heat the entire asteroid until the metal is malleable and the water turns to steam, puffing the asteroid out into the shell of your ship. add the motor and life support, attach the light sail to get you up to ram speeds, and go where you want.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bussard_ramjet

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 04:00 PM

>>>Nope. To the pilot, it will be 1g at all times. Got to look at it relativistically.- His speed will approach cee, but never reach it- and time will slow down as he gets faster. in HIS ( or her) frame, it will be constant acceleration at 1 g, to an observer on Earth it will look like he is traveling just below cee ( need to have the light-cones to see the actual "apparent" velocity, as the light from the moving spacecraft will be both frequency shifted and seen at some time later ( based on distance from the observer.)<<

Nope. you also have to look at it from the point of view of the Ship. The faster it is going the more energy will be required to gather fuel and accelerate.

Think of the electromagnetic field as a windsock on a motorboat. Think of the motor of the motorboat as the engine on your space ship. At low speeds the motorboat's engine can over come the drag of the windsock. But the more you accelerate, the harder it will become to accelerate. For any given motor and magic field there will be a terminal velocity and diminishing returns will set in once that velocity is approached. Up to a certain point the faster you go the more fuel you can collect, but once you pass that will also diminish once you start to a approach a high percentage of C.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: CarolC
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 04:04 PM

Marsupials are a primitive form of mammals. Marsupials are a kind of mammal, and they are a kind that is more primitive than placental mammals. The idea that placental mammals didn't evolve from marsupials is entirely irrelevant to the statement that marsupials are a primitive form of mammal.

A mammal is an animal that has mammary glands. Marsupials have mammary glands. Marsupials are more primitive than placental mammals because they don't form placentas. Therefore, marsupials are a primitive form of mammal.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 04:11 PM

>>>Certainly minor compared to a "fuel-less" drive or FTL.

Minor as compared to impossible by any known science.

Relativity that Einstein would be proud of

But it seems it would be a more minor advance to play dice with God and ask for a magical interplanetary unicorn when you win''

LOL!

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 04:15 PM

Thanks for the link Bruce.

I forgot to mention this limitation on the speed of the space ship.

>>>The ramjet's exhaust velocity, and the net thrust level obtained from the exhaust jet. The generated thrust can be calculated as the mass of ions expelled per second multiplied by the ramjet exhaust velocity (Ve)<<

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: CarolC
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 04:16 PM

Monotremes, by the way, are a more primitive form of mammal than marsupials. Here's the way it works...

Monotremes - have mammary glands, but no nipples: only holes from which milk oozes, and no placentas.

Marsupials - have mammary glands and nipples, but no placentas.

Placental mammals - have mammary glands and nipples and placentas.


The order of most primitive to least primitive (mammals) goes like this...

Monotreme
Marsupial
Placental mammal

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 04:25 PM

>>"Though it would be difficult to PROVE that the Pak are NOT the cause of human evolution."

I think it would be pretty easy to prove.

"Hey Larry Niven! Where did Pak come from?"
Larry Niven:"I made them up."

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Little Hawk
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 04:30 PM

Well, Jack, I've felt for some time that the aliens are using a method of propulsion that:

1. does not use fuel
2. is not subject to our laws of inertia (no "G" forces to contend with)
3. either operates quite independently of gravitational forces or has a way of utilizing them or reversing them at will to propel the vessel
4. may involve what we would term interdimensional or even time travel
5. may therefore be effectively instantaneous when crossing great distances and would place the traveller safely at a predetermined junction point which would be accurately chosen and calculated
6. after you arrive at that point you do local maneuvering, using the same basic system (or another), but at manageable speeds for local manuevering



Now...Jack...if that is so, then Einstein and Newton knew nothing about it. This would not mean that their laws are wrong, it would simply mean that their laws only go so far and are not adequate to cover all situations.

And if it is so, then it would explain the things that you can't find an explanation for.

What makes you so sure that you already know enough to say that it can't be so?

I'm not saying it is so...I'm simply saying it might be.

You see, when I am already convinced about 99.9% that aliens have visited us and are doing so, I do not look for various ways to convince myself that it's impossible that they could travel here...or extremely improbable. Why bother to waste my time doing that? No, I look for theories as to how they did manage to travel here. It's much more productive than trying to disprove what I already regard as a virtual certainty: alien contact with this planet.

The reason we are arguing in different directions, you see, is we're proceeding from entirely different initial assumptions.

My assumption: They are visiting us. I regard that as a given.

A number of you don't see it that way at all. Therefore you argue in different directions and with entirely different purposes in mind. To me, it's like you're trying to explain why fish can't swim....but I already know they can! ;-)

We all agree about the fish. We don't all agree about the aliens.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: gnu
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 04:49 PM

Gee... 176 posts... never read a one... kinda figured I didn't need to on accounta I am from Kent County and there's enough strangers up there fer me. I might back track a might, tho, seein as there's 176 posts, so there might be an intelligent discussion goin on. Iffin there is, I won't be back.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Little Hawk
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 04:54 PM

Wal...don't let the danged swingin' doors hit ya in tha ass when yer leavin', eh, gnu? ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: gnu
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 04:59 PM

Never did, LH... and I've left many places many a time.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 04:59 PM

Little Hawk,

What you have seen, is something that subjectively, looked like a space ship, to you. The rest of the details are coming from speculation and imagination.

A better analogy would be to say that you saw a cloud that was shaped like a fish and now you are telling us which body of water it came from and what kind of bait was used to catch it.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 05:01 PM

>>seein as there's 176 posts, so there might be an intelligent discussion goin on.

I think the discussion has been intelligent, do you need it to be sensible or practical?

:-)

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Little Hawk
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 05:21 PM

You're darned right it looked like a spaceship, Jack. ;-) You shoulda been there. What was more impressive than its looks, though, was its performance, let me tell you. Those guys definitely could teach us Earthlings a thing or two about speed...and rapid deceleration, not to mention right angle turns.

That's why I think they're using some complete other method of travel than anything we know about.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 05:59 PM

What about the Click and Clack theory?

Why couldn't it have been something two guys from Cambridge, MA welded together in their spare time? They invented the drive, built the ship and are using it to play pranks on people.

That theory would fit the observations as well as yours and would not require interstellar travel.

Or even more intriguing, the CIA could be directly projecting these images onto the receptors of your optic nerve. Have you been forgetting to wear your tin foil hat?

;-)

ps, I read the "tinfoil hat" thing to Carol and she rolled her eyes.

LOL

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Little Hawk
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 09:13 PM

"Why couldn't it have been something two guys from Cambridge, MA welded together in their spare time?"

Yeah, right. ;-D

Man, I don't know what the heck it is that you're on, Jack, but you really need to look into changing your meds...or your recreational drugs...whatever. (chuckle) Talk to Shane when he gets outta the joint. He has a connection to some incredible homegrown.

How the heck Carol puts up with you is more than I can make out. The poor woman must have the patience of a saint. Count your lucky stars, son. (grin)

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: catspaw49
Date: 07 Aug 08 - 01:10 AM

Actually it was a flight of marsupial-like aliens with ramjets up their asses that crashed into the WTC & the Pentagon on 9/11..............

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack The Sailor
Date: 07 Aug 08 - 01:13 AM

Absolutely not! 'Spaw, =they had chemical rockets in their asses. Everyone knows the ramjets go in the pouches.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: catspaw49
Date: 07 Aug 08 - 02:05 AM

I guess that might be.......I think its forerunner, the Arkjet, was far less powerful and only came in pears.

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Paul Burke
Date: 07 Aug 08 - 03:15 AM

Bruce is right on the 1g acceleration- from the ship's point of view. As the ship gets nearer the speed of light, to an Earth- bound observer, it seems to almost cease to accelerate as it asymptotes to c. But from its own point of view, it keeps on accelerating.

There are still big problems- although they can travel 60 or 70 thousand light years in a few generations, by the time they got back here, 120000- 160000 years will have passed on Earth, which is as long as modern humans have existed. Goodness knows what kind of reception they'd get. Even assuming they didn't bang into anything on the way, and 5 or 6 generations down the line, they've remembered what they set off for. Just navigating back to Earth will be hard enough, as it will have moved.

Perhaps the Neanderthals developed an advanced civilisation, the traces of which have been destroyed by glaciation, and the UFOs we see are their deep- space probes returning to report back....

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Stu
Date: 07 Aug 08 - 04:34 AM

"The order of most primitive to least primitive (mammals) goes like this...

Monotreme
Marsupial
Placental mammal"

This is wrong - you are assuming placentals developed from marsuipals and marsuipials developed from monotremes - this is not currently supported by the fossil evidence.

Evolution is not a ladder or a cone-shaped bush with the simpler and older forms at the bottom and more advanced forms at the top, with one species being more advanced than another; it's a branching, sprawling climbing plant throwing out runners in many directions with many dead ends pruned by natural selection. In the mammalian runner placentals, monotremes and marsupials are all offshots of different twigs, not buds on a single twig with monotremes at the bottom and placentals at the top. They are the result of diversity within a monophylectic group, not a indication of evolutionary status as 'primitive' or 'advanced'.

The old ladder view, taught for so long in schools and still in some textbooks now has long been shown to be defunct; the idea that if a genus is older it must be simpler is not taken seriously by modern students of palaeontology.

It might be worth having a look at the wikipedia page on cladistics which explains it far better than I can (although it does use the term 'tree of life').

Of course, when the aliens finally land they can prove all this wrong with their far superior knowledge (assuming they have DNA etc).

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack The Sailor
Date: 07 Aug 08 - 07:47 AM

Bruce is right on the 1g acceleration- from the ship's point of view. As the ship gets nearer the speed of light, to an Earth- bound observer, it seems to almost cease to accelerate as it asymptotes to c. But from its own point of view, it keeps on accelerating.

_________________


Bruce may be right on that point. But it assumes perfect conditions, No drag, no inertia, and a light speed exhaust velocity.

That is certainly not the case with bussard ramjet. I just read Bruce's Wiki link. The 1978 the the bussard ramjet was rendered infeasible due to new data about interstellar hydrogen. There was some more work done in 1985, Bottom line, Our Aliens would have had to launch the fuel ahead of the their ship.

I think that perfect trip with constant 1 g acceleration is out of the question with any technology deemed feasible in our science.

Why do these Aliens hate Einstein?

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: catspaw49
Date: 07 Aug 08 - 07:55 AM

"Why do these Aliens hate Einstein?"

I think its because they fail to acknowledge any form of humor so his Super Dave act never plays well with them. Why they have no sense of humor is not known although many non Aliens find no humor in Super Dave either.

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,CarolC
Date: 07 Aug 08 - 08:24 AM

No, I am not assuming that placentals evolved from marsupials and marsupials evolved from monotremes. To say I am making this assumption is itself an even bigger assumption, and it shows a lack of understanding of what criteria are used to determine which species are more primitive than others. It has nothing whatever to do with which species evolved from which other species. It's all about the body parts and their functions.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Little Hawk
Date: 07 Aug 08 - 09:18 AM

They don't hate Einstein, they just chuckle knowingly when his name comes up... ;-)

Man, I pity you folks...goin' on and on about sub-light speed as if it was the only way to travel. Next you'll be telling me that the horse and buggy are still the most reliable form of transport.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: CarolC
Date: 07 Aug 08 - 02:35 PM

Google search on the phrase "marsupials are primitive mammals"...

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22marsupials+are+primitive+mammals%22&btnG=Search


A few excerpts...

Marsupials are primitive mammals
that bear their young prematurely
then shelter them in the mother's
pouch (the marsupium) until they
are fully developed.

US Fish and Wildlife Service


Marsupials are primitive mammals from the time of dinosaurs.

Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay Journal


Marsupials are primitive mammals with pouches in which the young develop after what would be considered premature for other animals a premature birth

Textbook - The Biological Basis of Cancer


The marsupials are primitive mammals and comprise numerous different families

Wildlife Resources


From a slightly different search...

In order to understand the evolution of mammals geneticists have to compare the genetic code of various mammals with that of fish and birds. But the genetic codes of most mammals are too similar among each other while being too different from those of fishes and birds. However, marsupial mammals and monotremes (egg-laying mammals) are primitive mammals that allow such comparisons.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Marsupial-genome-reveals-insights-into-mammalian-evolution-17395.shtml


The reason they are considered primitive in relation to the modern placentals is because, regardless of whether or not placentals share any ancestors at all with monotremes and marsupials, monotremes and marsupials retain many characteristics that were originally found in birds, reptiles, and the earliest mammals, including their means of reproduction, gestation and lactation, their dentition (in the case of the monotremes), and the articulation of their shoulder and hip joints (and some others); characteristics that were replaced with other (further evolved) characteristics in the modern placental mammals.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Little Hawk
Date: 07 Aug 08 - 05:38 PM

LOL!

You have them staggering away in confusion now, Carol.... ;-D

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: CarolC
Date: 07 Aug 08 - 05:43 PM

LOL

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 07 Aug 08 - 07:05 PM

This link is to a long, complex, semi-interesting talk on the convergence in evolution between large, highly evolved and specialized placental mammals, such as elephants and manatees large highly evolved and specialized marsupials such as kangaroos.


Convergent evolution

It seems that in many ways the kangaroo is just as specialized and well adapted as any other large mammal.

Would it be fair to say that the kangaroo, while perhaps more primitive reproductively, is less primitive than the most primitive placental mammals in other areas?

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: CarolC
Date: 07 Aug 08 - 10:39 PM

It might be. But the most primitive placental mammals are also primitive mammals. As are marsupials and monotremes.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: catspaw49
Date: 08 Aug 08 - 01:13 AM

This is all very well as it were but probably never was, but none of it explains alien life forms like Hawk or WalksaboutVerse which they are or might be for reasons both known and unknown in all regards for which I have none and why Walksabout will nwever have a satisfactory boner til rigor sets in and he steps out.............or not, probably.

Spaw

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

and 200

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

CarolC: Thanks for those links, but I still disagree. This idea of 'primitive' is not accepted in modern palaeontological circles; This article explains it about as well as any and centres around the derived characteristics of Platypi (?). Note that it's thought the marsupials and placentals branched off the mammalian lineage at the same time, so one is not more advanced than the other, they're different. It's worth checking out his other blogs too.

Actually, I am wondering if we're arguing slightly at cross-purposes here because when I was reading this blog on the mammalian family tree I realised we're both right in a sense, although I still dispute the fact modern montremes and marsupials are more primitive than placentals.

Good debate : )

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

Platypuses, or if you insist on Greek, platypodes (with the E pronounced).

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Stu
Date: 08 Aug 08 - 07:37 AM

I thought before I chose Platypi - apparently it's the the word the locals use (although I actually read this on the internet, so stand to be corrected by anyone who lives near a Platypus).

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: CarolC
Date: 08 Aug 08 - 01:11 PM

I think the problem is that some people are placing a value judgment on the word "primitive" that doesn't exist in the way I am using it.

In the training that I have received in the natural sciences, the word primitive in contexts like this one simply means - closer to earlier forms in development than those that are not being described as primitive. There is no value judgment implied.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: CarolC
Date: 08 Aug 08 - 01:16 PM

JtS and I were discussing this last night. He was having some problems with my use of the word 'primitive' also, and he was asking some questions about it. He wanted to know if being primitive in the way I was using the word, suggested lesser intelligence than less primitive. I told him that it did not. Birds are more primitive than mammals (in terms of development), but many kinds of birds are far more intelligent than some mammals. I think some people just don't understand how the word primitive is used in this kind of context.

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: Little Hawk
Date: 09 Aug 08 - 09:21 AM

Here we go...Jackie and Dunlap weigh in on the Edgar Mitchell story and give us their opinion.

"Them astronauts think they're so damn smart! They don't know nothin'! "

Subject: RE: BS: Astronaut Ed Mitchell on Alien visits
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 09 Aug 08 - 01:58 PM

The gettin in a diaper and drivin across the country to kidnap her boyfriend's girlfriend thing set the credibility of astronauts back a tad.