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BS: The Mysterious Flying Buildings
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Subject: RE: BS: The Mysterious Flying Buildings From: GUEST,Subulimey Ridiculous Name (sic) Date: 07 Nov 10 - 06:50 PM People are fooled by these things, Lizzie - check this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLgwcMxFscQ * Josepp - you're argument defeats itself: if our govt can't hide ET spacecraft (or some other sci-fi multiverse vehicles zooming along the Inca Roads) how can our govt conceal their hi-tech super-craft - and, more to the point, why? Shit, our govt can't even afford Nimrod, let alone flying saucers. No score on both counts - if these things existed, people would be seeing them in the real world, not just in the Comfort Zones of Conspiracy Island. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Mysterious Flying Buildings From: Lizzie Cornish 1 Date: 07 Nov 10 - 07:10 PM Nope, still wrong..they didn't look like that..Keep trying.. ;0) "I thought she was daydreaming about Sean Connery..." Pete Duel actually. The only man to make it into the inside of my wardrobe, where I secretly hid a newspaper cutting about him, which had his photo on...He had such a gentle face. I was so sad when he died. Oh, and The Monkees, I used to love them too, for different reasons..Happy times.. :0) |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Mysterious Flying Buildings From: robomatic Date: 07 Nov 10 - 07:32 PM "gas music from Mars" Be sure to listen to the iconic Firesign Theatre: "Everything You Know Is Wrong" They said it better, they said it first And on a musical note, may I recommend Dan Bern, who solves both the purpose of aliens AND the nature of human evolution: "Aliens came, and f*cked the monkey, they f*cked the monkey!" |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Mysterious Flying Buildings From: josepp Date: 07 Nov 10 - 09:37 PM ///Josepp - you're argument defeats itself: if our govt can't hide ET spacecraft (or some other sci-fi multiverse vehicles zooming along the Inca Roads) how can our govt conceal their hi-tech super-craft - and, more to the point,//// Because they have total control over their own inventions and secrets. They don't control an outside agency with a super technology or are you going to insist that they do? It is your argument that defeats itself. ////why?\\\ Why??? Sure, let's just admit to the entire world what secret technology we have in the works. That's a great way to keep one step ahead of them. ////Shit, our govt can't even afford Nimrod, let alone flying saucers.//// Being that I watched one cavorting in the sky right outside an Air Force base for 4 hours while they did absolutely nothing about it and this was in the 60s, I'm afraid I have to disagree with you--vehemently. They build 'em, they fly 'em. ///No score on both counts - if these things existed, people would be seeing them in the real world, not just in the Comfort Zones of Conspiracy Island.//// What?? They DO see them! But like most brainwashed idiots they can't think outside the box. "Oooo, there goes ET!" Correction, there goes your tax dollars hard at work. The question is, of course, at what? I think that's a FAR more important question than Star Trek fantasies about ET and inter-dimensional nonsense. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Mysterious Flying Buildings From: Don Firth Date: 08 Nov 10 - 01:41 AM No comment necessary. Don Firth |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Mysterious Flying Buildings From: Smokey. Date: 08 Nov 10 - 01:46 AM Wot me? Comment? |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Mysterious Flying Buildings From: Little Hawk Date: 08 Nov 10 - 02:16 AM josepp - I do think our government has built and is flying some secret vehicles such as you allude to. So I AM capable of thinking outside that box you mentioned. However, I also think that there are genuine alien vehicles visiting, and that our government has built some of its own secret vehicles by back-engineering some of the alien technology they've recovered from crashed disabled alien vehicles recovered at Roswell and elsewhere since the late 40's...and that's where the government's new technology got its start. The government would attach the utmost importance to such a project and would do their utmost to keep it secret...or suppressed...not only because they fear the alien capabilities, but also because they wish to retain a technological edge on all the other Earth powers. And that is probably why a surprising number of other countries are spending a hell of a lot of money on independent space projects of their own. They wish to catch up to the American space technology, specially the back-engineered stuff. I have reason to believe these things, I didn't just dream it all up by myself. You are the one who can't think outside the box, because you can't admit to the possibility that we're not alone, and that other intelligent races can navigate space to here and are doing so. You are analogous to a witch doctor or a common native on some isolated Pacific island in the 1500s who insists that his little tribe on that island are the only people on the planet...or anywhere, for that matter, and are the only people who can build boats, and who refuses to believe witnesses who saw large ships with sails appear off the coast. Further, he asserts that those large ships must be just secret ships being built by someone in his own tribe! ;-) Imagine his surprise on the day the English or the Dutch finally arrive and walk up the beach to him! That's thinking in a box, josepp. It's very small thinking, that's for sure. And that is what I think you are doing. Why? Well, you already decided to, that's why. To change your mind now would mean you had been WRONG about something! And that's just unthinkable, right? Why, it could mean the destruction of your very identity!!! People might laugh at you. Even your dog could lose respect for you. Yes, I can understand why you won't budge an inch. ;-) It is indeed a VERY important question what our government is doing with its high tech stuff and why, because I consider our government far more dangerous itself than any visiting aliens who may have been here thus far. I think if the visiting aliens were dangerous, it would already be over, and we'd be a conquered race. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Mysterious Flying Buildings From: Lizzie Cornish 1 Date: 08 Nov 10 - 03:44 AM Is it not just a trifle arrogant to believe that our planet is the only one with any form of life on it? I think so... And..I wonder what other 'folks' in other 'worlds' think when they see our spaceships flying across the universe? |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Mysterious Flying Buildings From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray Date: 08 Nov 10 - 05:11 AM Here on Planet Earth we have an estimated 14 million different species of life, a mere 2 million of which having been given scientific names, and yet, saving a few absurd experiments with higher primates, we can't communicate with any of them. If life does exist on other planets, then it's a supreme anthropomorphic conceit that it will be in any way, shape or form like us... |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Mysterious Flying Buildings From: The Fooles Troupe Date: 08 Nov 10 - 06:00 AM "if the visiting aliens were dangerous, it would already be over, and we'd be a conquered race" They are, and it is. They bought the media, and left Murdoch behind to keep us in control.... :-P |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Mysterious Flying Buildings From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler Date: 08 Nov 10 - 08:24 AM Let's postulate that some alien race has discovered a scientific principle that we have yet to find (let's face it we haven't been around that long yet compared to the dinosaurs). They discover a way to travel long distances without taking any time to get where they are going. Are they going to start talking to a planetful of primitives which will mean spending ages to learn communication skills, languages etc., or are they going to go sight-seeing (whatever their version of sight-seeing is) instead? They have millions of planets to visit so they will spend time on the interesting but safe ones. They may gett round to coming back here later once they've checked that they haven't something more important to do. Perhaps they are off to save the Galaxy from collapsing into a giat black hole or something similar and are just checking us out for ideas! |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Mysterious Flying Buildings From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray Date: 08 Nov 10 - 08:45 AM Yes, yes, but why would they be disguising their spacecraft as Chinese Lanterns? |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Mysterious Flying Buildings From: Little Hawk Date: 08 Nov 10 - 12:07 PM Nawww, the real question is "Why are the Chinese disguising their lanterns as alien vehicles?" ;-) And how the hell do you pronounce "Suibhne"? "If life does exist on other planets, then it's a supreme anthropomorphic conceit that it will be in any way, shape or form like us..." And who says that it is or that it has to be in a shape or form similar to us? If it did in some cases turn out to be similar to us, though, that could raise some very interesting questions about the evolution of life not only on this planet, but throughout the wider Universe. It could also raise interesting questions about the possible migration or controlled "seeding" of life from one planetary system to another over the last 100 million or more years...such seeding could have been done a very long time ago, and it could well be the true origin of homo sapiens on planet Earth as well as numerous other lifeforms. To merely reject that and all other possibilities which you haven't thought of yourself yet just because you haven't thought of them yourself would indicate a supreme form of conceit too, I think. Personal conceit, however, not anthropomorphic conceit. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Mysterious Flying Buildings From: josepp Date: 08 Nov 10 - 12:19 PM ///It is indeed a VERY important question what our government is doing with its high tech stuff and why, because I consider our government far more dangerous itself than any visiting aliens who may have been here thus far. I think if the visiting aliens were dangerous, it would already be over, and we'd be a conquered race./// I agree. How long can we afford to keep looking for ET and ignore what's going on our own govt? Whatever they are up to, it can't be any good or at least we would be wise to assume so. Also I am not saying there is no life on other planets but I am saying for that life to be humanoid, our solar system has to be virtually recreated tit for tat and that is statistically out of the question. And even if it happened there would be NO CHANCE of them finding us or us finding them. Anybody who disagrees simply and grossly underestimates the size of our galaxy as well as its immense age. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Mysterious Flying Buildings From: Stu Date: 08 Nov 10 - 12:34 PM "Is it not just a trifle arrogant to believe that our planet is the only one with any form of life on it? I think so..." Very true, but this observation has nothing to do with UFO's or visitations by aliens. Anyway, as I've said on other threads they're already here (a boon for the seeding theorists); have a look for these papers online: THE RED RAIN PHENOMENON OF KERALA AND ITS POSSIBLE EXTRATERRESTRIAL ORIGIN Godfrey Louis and A. Santhosh Kumar Growth and replication of red rain cells at 121oC and their red fluorescence Rajkumar Gangappa1,2, Chandra Wickramasinghe2* , Milton Wainwright3 , A. Santhosh Kumar4 and Godfrey Louis4 I've posted these as clickys on a thread on ETL before but seeing as they were ignored then (obviously got in the way of a good debate) I can't be arsed to root the links out again. Here's my prediction: One day terrestrial ecosystems will be seen as subsets of much vaster solar-system or galaxy-wide ecosystems. As for life . . . there's a distinct possibility we don't recognise all forms of life on this planet; there might be lifeforms in our back gardens we don't recognise as being 'alive' in the familiar sense, but might be sentient and ancient creatures. How utterly disappointing if the aliens look anything like mankind has the wit to dream up. The reality will be far more wonderful and inspiring. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Mysterious Flying Buildings From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray Date: 08 Nov 10 - 12:38 PM And how the hell do you pronounce "Suibhne"? Sweeney. And who says that it is or that it has to be in a shape or form similar to us? What I mean is given to language, culture and technology. Of the millions of species we know of, we're the only ones who do that. Otherwise - I'm way too much of a sci-fi fan to believe in any of this stuff; Quatermass and the Pit makes for a fine film, but not be taken seriously, or religiously, as some people do. It's all there in the sci-fi canon - ad infinitum - but if there is life out there, I'm guessing it'll be more Alien than Star Trek, though I did enjoy District 9. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Mysterious Flying Buildings From: Jack the Sailor Date: 08 Nov 10 - 12:49 PM Show it to me on CNN. If there was any real evidence at all, Anderson Cooper's tight black tee shirt would be there. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Mysterious Flying Buildings From: VirginiaTam Date: 08 Nov 10 - 01:07 PM animal or alien? |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Mysterious Flying Buildings From: Little Hawk Date: 08 Nov 10 - 01:20 PM "One day terrestrial ecosystems will be seen as subsets of much vaster solar-system or galaxy-wide ecosystems." Yes, that's what I would expect to happen too. Just as people on this planet once had only a very local focus...like the Native on the island who thinks there are no other people out there beyond his island...the picture has kept broadening all through our cultural history. We've found myriad new forms of life on this planet which most people once knew nothing about. I expect we will also find myriad new forms of life in space once we become adept at traveling in space. It's all out there waiting for us. We just have to go and look. Some of those forms of life will probably be more advanced than we are. If so, some of them have probably come here from time to time, both in the remote past and maybe right now. How long they would stay or what they would do would depend on how much importance they place upon us. It may not be much. We're also very dangerous people with all our weapons and our divided political paranoia. This would, I think, make alien lifeforms quite careful when and if they visited our planet. God knows, I'd be careful if I was an alien visiting here! ;-) |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Mysterious Flying Buildings From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray Date: 08 Nov 10 - 02:43 PM Thanks for that, VT - cheered me up no end! |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Mysterious Flying Buildings From: Don Firth Date: 08 Nov 10 - 03:16 PM ". . . for that life to be humanoid, our solar system has to be virtually recreated tit for tat and that is statistically out of the question." Absolutely untrue. The opposite, in fact. Check out the Drake Equation. I linked to it above, but here it is again, There are all kinds of different ways that life can develop (see some of the more bizarre species here on earth). But such things as bilateral symmetry, four limbs, binocular vision, and binaural hearing have immense survival advantages. It is not at all unlikely that a fairly advanced (meaning it has survived awhile and evolved over many generations) would have a basic physiological structure similar to our own. This is not science fiction, it is not my own whim, and it is not "pie in the sky." It's the opinion of a substantial number of exobiologists. Don Firth |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Mysterious Flying Buildings From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray Date: 08 Nov 10 - 03:45 PM It is not at all unlikely that a fairly advanced (meaning it has survived awhile and evolved over many generations) would have a basic physiological structure similar to our own. They might be physiologically identical but they still wouldn't be human. The anythropomorphic conceit here (essential to sci-fi) is to assume that all we'd have to do to be able to talk to them is translate our respective languages. Otherwise, that equation, like SETI itself, is the stuff of fantasy. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Mysterious Flying Buildings From: josepp Date: 08 Nov 10 - 05:42 PM Michael Shermer makes pretty short work of the Drake Equation. I'll leave it you to look it up. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Mysterious Flying Buildings From: Don Firth Date: 08 Nov 10 - 06:24 PM Communication would be a major problem, even if an advanced, intelligent, alien (extraterrestrial) species did appear quite humanoid. I recall reading French undersea explorer and researcher Jacques Cousteau (in his first book, The Silent World, back in the early 1950s) how they took note of the porpoises escorting and cavorting around the prow of the ship and knowing that there had been very little work done on porpoises, including their physiology, they killed on and brought it aboard for dissection and research. Interesting to note that all the other porpoises backed way off from the ship and generally disappeared for a number of weeks, probably the whole pod, to be replaced weeks later by another one. Anyway, the dissection proved downright unsettling. Cousteau wrote that the internal organs looked almost identical to those of a human. The brain was practically indistinguishable—same size, convolutions, and all! And the lungs, apart from the trachea, which didn't merge with the esophagus, but emerged from the back of what would have been the neck, also looked indistinguishable from human lungs (remembering, of course, that a porpoise is an air-breather). This proved sufficiently disturbing that Cousteau vowed never to kill another porpoise. But many experiments have been conducted with porpoises involving various tests to check their intelligence. And this has proven to be a bit uncanny. Sometimes the porpoise's solution to the problem presented was different from what the researcher expected and proved to be downright ingenious. A whole different approach to solving the same problem. Carl Sagan describes how they had separated male and female porpoises into two different pools (connected) because they seemed to be a bit slow, listless, and lazy during a day's experiments. Someone in the lab noticed that the males and females were "honeymooning" a lot when they thought the humans were around, so they were separated. And someone was assigned to keep a surreptitious eye on them. A couple of nights after the separation, the porpoises had figured out how to open the latch between tanks! Then, after their nights "sport and play," they separated and re-latched the gate!! Dumb animals? I don't think so!! The big problem is that we know they are highly intelligent, but we don't know how highly intelligent. And we haven't been able actually communicate with them, nor figure out a way in which we can! Part of it is the porpoises' vocalizations are all squeaks and whistles, and as far as we can tell (??) are primarily used like sonar for underwater navigation purposes. Whether or not they communicate with each other this way, we don't know. They do seem to communicate, but we haven't been able to figure out how! And what they may make of human speech, if they can even perceive it, we don't know. So—when and if we ever encounter an intelligent alien species, either on their world (which may be a little time yet) ore our own (could be already, could be never), assuming it's a meeting in which the major theme is mutual curiosity, boning up ahead of time by picking up a set of Marc Okrand's "Conversational Klingon" language tapes probably isn't going to help much. Do I think this kind of encounter will ever happen? (If not already?). I don't know. And neither do you! Don Firth |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Mysterious Flying Buildings From: Little Hawk Date: 08 Nov 10 - 06:30 PM Heh! And on it goes.... Well, when you've all succeeded in proving once and for all that you are right and the other guy is wrong, send me a note, okay? I'll send you each a gold sticker and a piece of bubble gum. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Mysterious Flying Buildings From: Don Firth Date: 08 Nov 10 - 06:54 PM I'm familiar with Michael Shermer—a professional skeptic. In fact, editor of "Skeptic Magazine." Neither he, nor all the other skeptics combined, have been able to make "short work" of the possibility--if not probability--of intelligent extraterrestrial species. Considering the wide latitude that Frank Drake built into the equation, estimating everything on the very, very low likelihood of something favorable to the existence of alien civilizations being the case. Yet, he comes up with a pretty impressive number. I don't have the time to educate you now, but you might try to learn something about such things as how common stars like our sun are throughout the universe (main sequence, G spectral class) and how common planetary systems are orbiting such stars. And not just main sequence stars. Many factors that astrobiologist are taking into consideration. Learn. Do the math. Don Firth |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Mysterious Flying Buildings From: Don Firth Date: 08 Nov 10 - 06:55 PM C'mon, Little Hawk! Get off that bus. Don Firth |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Mysterious Flying Buildings From: Stu Date: 09 Nov 10 - 04:48 AM "But such things as bilateral symmetry, four limbs, binocular vision, and binaural hearing have immense survival advantages." That's tetrapod-centric bunkum I'm afraid. The vast majority of living beings on the planet have no limbs at all and many of the rest far more than four, any number of eyes that have developed into several variations on the theme and vision suited to their particular lifestyle - binocular vision is no use to a mantis shrimp or a fly. "And we haven't been able actually communicate with them, nor figure out a way in which we can!" That's down to us, not them. We can communicate with captive cetaceans and do so readily (they even use iPads for the task) but are still no nearer to identifying a language apart from identification whistles (itself a contentious issue, see following link), and as the authors of this paper observe, "Human observers do not represent an unbiased filter through which one can classify the vocalizations of nonhuman animal species." That quote could equally apply to the whole 'what is alien life like?' debate, as we are so fond of creating aliens in our image as humanoid beings - it's difficult to bypass our "unbiased filter". In fact, to fully understand the remoteness of aliens being like us you have to look back at the development of life on earth, and the dominating role that chance plays in that process; our own evolution is massively unlikely, if you could rewind time to before the Cambrian explosion and press play again the outcome would be vastly different. Do it a thousand times and you'll have a thousand different outcomes, a million and you'll have a million etc etc. Apply that to the millions of planets that could support life and . . . phew! Almost unimaginable diversity. Apply that to the myriad of ways that life as we know it and life as we don't could evolve and the Drake equation begins to look a tad shaky; the variables are impossible to guess. In truth, the value of the Drake equation is in the questions it forces the observer to ask, rather than the number it generates. Loved the link VT! |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Mysterious Flying Buildings From: Allan C. Date: 09 Nov 10 - 06:11 AM Summer, 1967, Great Falls, Montana -- I was in the Air Force. A few of us were lounging in the barracks when we received a call from one of the "scope dopes", (radar technicians,) in the blockhouse that they had been seeing strange things on the screens. The radar was picking up what registered as unknown aircraft that sometimes traveled at speeds of 300 mph. The aircrafts, and there were at least three, as I recall, were said to make 90 degree turns from time to time at speed. Some of them had dropped below the radar. The scope dope asked if we could take a look outside to see if we could locate anything in the western sky. We did as requested, five or six of us, but didn't spot anything moving. Then we fixed our gazes on a seemingly stationary, white light that appeared to hover just above the horizon. We stared at this light for quite awhile. If it moved at all, it was all but imperceptibly. I remember one of the guys turning to me and asking me if I thought it was a UFO. I asked him if he knew what it was. He said, "No." I said I didn't know what it was either. "Therefore," I said, "it is a UFO!" |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Mysterious Flying Buildings From: Stu Date: 09 Nov 10 - 06:44 AM Alan - I posted this in a previous UFO thread: But here's a thing (a true one too). This summer my wife and I travelled across the Atlantic and spend three weeks in the American West. The first week was spent in the field digging for dinosaurs in the badlands of the Hell Creek formation of North Dakota and Montana. On our last day in the field our two-car convoy was headed north on a highway in Montana close to the ND border when a flash of movement on the far horizon caught my eye. I watched a sleek object shoot up at an incredible speed and on a trajectory that would be impossible for a fixed wing aircraft. I pointed it out to the other four people in the car and as one of the chaps commented, it "was haulin' ". It might have been a missile or something but it was really shifting, leaving a sharp trail through the clouds but no trail in the blue sky. I can honestly say I've never seen anything like it in my life, and I've lived near airports all my life. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Mysterious Flying Buildings From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler Date: 09 Nov 10 - 08:12 AM I remember reading that in the fossil record before one of the major extinctions there were many animals that had a greater variety of number of limbs then occurred afterwards. So four limbs could well just be a lucky configuration. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Mysterious Flying Buildings From: Don Firth Date: 09 Nov 10 - 04:46 PM Don't argue with me, Sugarfoot, argue with astrobiologists. That's where I got most of what I wrote above. Animals of any size at all tend toward four limbs. This applies to land animals, although the same thing tends to apply to aquatic ones. Count functioning fins on fish, cetaceans, et al. Squid and octopi are also bilaterally symmetrical, as are most microbiological creatures larger than a few cells, even thought they are not skeletal. A skeleton (support frame) is pretty essential to a land animal over a given size. More limbs than four tend to get in the way. But this may very well be subject to variation. Astrobiologists (exobiologists) are pretty much in agreement that, given conditions essentially analogous to those on earth (what we would consider a "Goldilocks planet" which is not too cold and not to hot, but 'just right'"—i.e., where liquid water can exist). From New Scientist by Stephen Battersby What might extraterrestrial life look like?A briefly stated view of the vast majority of scientists in the field. And this is a field in which almost all scientific disciplines are represented. The general consensus is that scientific laws are universal. Two plus two equals four, whether you are on Earth, Mars, the second planet orbiting the largest star in the trinary group Alpha Centauri, on some planet orbiting a star in the Andromeda galaxy, or some planet orbiting a star in a galaxy so far away that even the Hubble telescope can't detect it. Two plus two still equals four. Don Firth |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Mysterious Flying Buildings From: Stu Date: 10 Nov 10 - 04:49 AM Well, if that's what astrobiologists say they might do better to talk to palaeontologists who have some insight into the mechanics of life. "Animals of any size at all tend toward four limbs." No, vertebrates do because they are all descended from a common ancestor (a creature similar to Pikia that had four legs. To see how things might have been it's worth reading up on The Burgess Shale, we could both be sitting here typing with our five eyes and weirdly segmented bodies and lots of legs ;-) This applies to land animals, although the same thing tends to apply to aquatic ones. For the reason quoted above - we are all descended from a common ancestor (although interestingly the number of digits at the end of those limbs was variable in the early stages of tetrapod development). This excludes the millions of insect species too who are supremely adapted to terrestrial life. Bilateral symmetry is a major feature of animal life but it's not universal. Sponges are asymmetrical and many animals such as cnidarians display radial symmetry. As for the upper size limit of an exoskeleton, certainly in terrestrial and aquatic arthropods there have been bigger forms than now although I'm not sure of the reasons offhand (raised O2 levels might be involved?). As for the Battersby quote, I quite agree. See the papers I suggested people look up in my earlier post regarding possible extraterrestrial cellular life exhibiting some interesting characteristics and it's always worth Googling alh84001 . . . "The general consensus is that scientific laws are universal Two plus two still equals four." Absolutely, but that doesn't mean there is one path that all life must follow. There are endless chemical, environmental, physical variables that means chance plays a massive role in evolution. Of course aliens may exhibit convergent evolution with any number of Earth lifeforms, but chances are even they will exhibit some interesting and undreamt of variations. I might be a bit crap at getting my point over. It's worth picking this book up to better understand the roles of chance and biological contingency in evolution - plus it's a fascinating read and everything in it applies equally to alien life as it does Earthbound: Wonderful Life: Burgess Shale and the Nature of History by Stephen Jay Gould. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Mysterious Flying Buildings From: Stu Date: 10 Nov 10 - 07:06 AM Actually, Pikia had no legs, but one of it's descendants dis - oops! Don - I got to thinking about this after I posted; palaeontologists and zoologists often enjoy speculation about how evolution might have played out if the variables had been different; check out these speculative zoology blogs: Metazoica Speculative Dinosaur Project - scroll down to see the excellent sketches on how penguins (extant dinosaurs of course) might have developed. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Mysterious Flying Buildings From: Don Firth Date: 10 Nov 10 - 03:40 PM "Well, if that's what astrobiologists say they might do better to talk to palaeontologists who have some insight into the mechanics of life." They have, Sugarfoot. As I have said a number of times here, the field of astrobiology includes all scientific disciplines (including paleontology), and they all have an input into any new theory that someone comes up with. The folks involved in this field are anything but lightweights. Don't underestimate them. This is a serious field of study. I'm not trying to claim that bilateral symmetry, four limbs, skeletal structure, two eyes, two ears, etc., is the only possible model for intelligent aliens. What I am saying is a response to someone up-thread trying to claim that there are no intelligent extraterrestrials, and even if the impossible were to occur, they would not look even remotely humanoid. This is not what exobiologists/astrobiologists maintain. They don't say that this is the only possible model by any means, but the idea that no alien species would ever appear humanoid is something they reject, along with the idea that alien species would all look like they came from Central Casting and were equipped by the make-up department with pointy ears or a turtle shell on their foreheads. It's hard to imagine a sponge-like creature affixed to a rock at the bottom on an ocean and surviving on passing plankton needing to evolve much in the way of intelligence. I've spent a lot of time at various beaches, but I've never had a clam emerge from the sand and say, "Take me to your leader!" To evolve intelligence (fundamentally, a survival mechanism), a creature needs to be, among other things, mobile—and challenged in some way, so that the fittest of the species (those which survive whatever the challenge is) go on to breed even more intelligent members of the species. Basic. Whether on Earth or on a planet at the edge of the visible universe. Don Firth P. S. By the way, do not make the mistake of underestimating the speculations of some science fiction writers. Many of the best are solidly grounded scientists. Arthur C. Clarke (in non-fiction articles) has hypothesized a number of different models for intelligent aliens, from very exotic on non-earthlike planets to very humanoid (but quite different) on terrestrial planets. Orson Scott Card is also a rather ingenious (but solidly science-based) inventor of alien species. It's possible to hypothesize a humanoid appearing species which is very un-humanoid in its other aspects. Rationally, one cannot rule out anything that is not outright scientifically impossible. And the fact that WE exist PROVES that humanoid is a viable form on planets with earthlike or near-earthlike characteristics. The future may hold some amazing surprises. Or not. |
