Darting objects in night sky

ps200306

Mountainsandh wrote: »

How do you know for sure what's impossible though ?

Imagine a time traveller, who's able to make calls from his handsfree mobile set (to our century), from the 16th century (where he has travelled).

Now imagine two contemporaries observing this man talking, and speculating whether he's just mad talking to himself, talking to a tiny entity they can't see, talking to a God of some form etc... and one of them stating that it's clearly impossible he could be talking to a real other person in another location, because it's clearly impossible his word could be transmitted through thin air to a location they can't see with their own eyes.

I'm sure you know what you're talking about and you have great science to back you up, but how can you be 100 % positive that something is impossible ?

edit : excuse the convoluted example, it's just the best way I can think of to illustrate how something that seems impossible to us at this moment in time may in fact, not be so.

You can never be sure something is impossible. I know I said that you start by ruling out the impossible, but really I mean those things that would defy the laws of physics as we understand them. Even there, we probably have varying levels of confidence in the physical laws we know about. For instance, we suspect that time travel is impossible; we strongly suspect that gravity is universal; we really strongly suspect that the laws of physics don't change from one day to the next. But of course we can never be absolutely sure of anything. We have the disconcerting situation that we must whittle down the possible explanations for a phenomenon in order to not waste time on crazy wild goose chases, but the assumptions used in the whittling might be mistaken, causing us to miss an entirely new type of explanation that we had ruled out.

Mountainsandh

Thanks for the sensible reply, I was a bit uncomfortable thinking I may be shot down in flames as an alien worshipping nutcase.
I'm not.
But I do keep an open mind as regards the potential existence of a potentially more advanced life form, somewhere.

drdeadlift

auzworld wrote: »

Just came in from the back yard in walkintown area... and saw another object ( thats twice I saw these ) ... very faint but defo able to keep track of its unusual movements ..... its like a faint star but moves across the sky ... then stops .. then shoots off in another direction ... then stops ... then does a circular movement and stops ... then move across the sky .... at various speeds... some movements are very quick in acceleration ... very quick !!
the last time i posted people were saying its a shooting star or very high alt helicopters ... no way .... its not too hard to spot unusual movement in the sky these days .... anyone see anything like this .... Its not a plane for sure....

Seen the same as you a few years back.Little spots just stopping doing 90 deg turns then shooting off.They were of similar size or a bit smaller to the stars around them.

Nerro

jeez...have a go at optical illusions :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_illusion
Or it should be rather named "brain failures".Untill there is some sort of REAL evidence (no pictures and videos doesnt count as there might just be an UFO button in photoshop).When someone will produce some sort of piece of evidence that SOMEONE CAN ACTUALLY STUDY then we can talk.
As for now we dont have to "man up" but GET REAL.We are not that important for some allien civilizacion to travel huge and i mean huge distances just to play hide and seek?
I am not saying that more advanced civilizacions doesnt exist,i am sure they are, but for someone having the ability to travel interstellar distances, they wouldnt have anything in common to talk to us, we are simply idiots to them.Now imagine something beeing able to travel Intergalactic distances...we are ants to them...

Myrddin

Nerro wrote: »

they wouldnt have anything in common to talk to us, we are simply idiots to them.Now imagine something beeing able to travel Intergalactic distances...we are ants to them...

That doesn't stop someone from Limerick driving to Dublin Zoo to watch the Guerrillas eating their own poo. Maybe we're the poo eating apes in an intergalactic zoo

Joking aside, its a very interesting thread...I''m certainly at a loss to explain the OP's descriptions

Mountainsandh

And also, going by that reasoning, we might be much more than ants. We might be genetically interesting creatures with something they're missing or they need.
And of course, it may not be our life form, but the planet they may be interested in.

How about if we discover a planet in the goldilock zone, somewhere ?

Do you reckon we're not going to send some probes to discover it ? And then, are we not likely to keep on sending, and to keep on trying to get a better look at it, and a better understanding ? Forget about the money thing for a minute, I'm not talking necessarily about our century, with all its turmoil, and our silliness so far.

I'm sorry, but whether the universe is "packed" with intelligent life, or whether it has a few sparse examples of intelligent life, or one example of it, it makes total sense to me that the life in question would investigate ... the rest of the universe. Not just because they might be curious, but because there might be something in it, for them. Look at us, exploring what we can at this moment in time.

Nerro

One has to understand the intellect that have to be involved.the speed of light don't cut it anymore, you have to go several times the speed of light.and thats just in travel. What other advances in medicine etc they would have.what possibly they would require from our tiny insignificant planet?Water?There is more water in Jupiters moon Europa than on earth...some sort of DNA?one has to be really stupid to think that someone can conquere mind blowing distances but need our DNA code because for some reason they can't make it themselves, it's a mystery for them...
Constantly send probes to study?I would imagine they are more sophisticated then us and there should be enough to send 1.after all there is like 200 to 400 billion stars in our galaxy.that's a lot of stars to probe.
One thing we can be sure is they would need energy.Do we have energy?No.where is the most energy located in our galaxy?In the centre of the galaxy, wheres our solar system is not even close to it.so why would one waste their time?

davej

Wow, this is the thread that keeps on giving :rolleyes:

We need to see video from the OP or give up...

davej

Mountainsandh

Why give up ? it's nice to discuss things sometimes, that's what Boards is for...

But yeah, a video would be great

Nerro all your arguments are just conjecture, coming from the mind of a 21st century human. They're more than likely as bad as mine, although more scientifically based, no offence intended, really. :P

Maudi

Nerro wrote: »

One has to understand the intellect that have to be involved.the speed of light don't cut it anymore, you have to go several times the speed of light.and thats just in travel. What other advances in medicine etc they would have.what possibly they would require from our tiny insignificant planet?Water?There is more water in Jupiters moon Europa than on earth...some sort of DNA?one has to be really stupid to think that someone can conquere mind blowing distances but need our DNA code because for some reason they can't make it themselves, it's a mystery for them...
Constantly send probes to study?I would imagine they are more sophisticated then us and there should be enough to send 1.after all there is like 200 to 400 billion stars in our galaxy.that's a lot of stars to probe.
One thing we can be sure is they would need energy.Do we have energy?No.where is the most energy located in our galaxy?In the centre of the galaxy, wheres our solar system is not even close to it.so why would one waste their time?

great post and im with you ..on most of your posts..heck.all of them!!!!but i feel the speed of light/travel arguement is a human drawback..inter-planetery travel is possible but our ape like simple brain thinks it has (but dosent) have the comprehension (yet) to even comprehend the possibilities.

auzworld

I agree with Mountainsandh point of Observing new life forms if discovered... sure many a time looking at wildlife programs when they film things starving to death ... its our policy not to intervene ... They would only act differently .... Don't rock the boat and learn what you can ......

I also agree that the light/travel argument is a human drawback and History has proven that the impossible has been made possible and we have just only started to experimenting with nano tech / plasma / electro-magnetic technologies and other whole new fields of study that are essentially still in their infancy which will lead inevitably to others ..

Any how there was a delay in getting my gear ready but I am now in a position to capture anything unusual and certainly post it here !!

the thread has thrown up some very interesting points of view

Calibos

If there are intersteller travellers they'll have to use something like a Star trek Warp Drive if its possible to circumvent the laws of physics. Relativistic travel within real space is simply a non starter.

Take for example a trip to the Orion Nebula around 1400 light years away. Next door in Galactic terms. At reasonable percentages of lightspeed the trip there and back can be accomplished within a human lifetime. When you get into the 80%+ of lightspeed range it takes a couple of years,, faster, months, faster, weeks etc.

However what people need to understand, is that its the astronaut that experiences the trip as taking months or weeks etc due to time dialation. From our perspective on earth, the ship took 1400+ years to get there and 1400+ years for the return trip. ie. over 3000 years. Does anyone really think that any nation here on earth or any civilisation on another planet is going to devote a significant percentage of their GDP to the mission when the payback wont come for 3000 years??

Its like the ancient Egyptians devoting all the worlds resources to an interstellar mission to the Orion Nebula that will only be arriving home about now.

As for most sightings. Its hard to dispute a conclusion when one wasn't there. Had an experienced amatuer astronomer been there who's seen it all been standing there, I'd wager 999 times out of 1000 we could tell you exactly what you likely saw.

I once saw what looked like an object in space make a perfect instantaneous 90º turn. Turns out it was an airliner at cruising altitude go behind a small cloud at exactly the same time as another on a perpendicular course came out from behind the small cloud...from my perspective. Neither were anywhere near the little tuft of cloud, neither were anywhere near each other either horizontally or vertically of course. Perspective can really play tricks on you.

For an instant I said to myself!! OMG, the descriptions of this kind of sighting are true!!!!..........that was until both airliners had now cleared the cloud from my perspective and I could see both at the same time and as one was heading in my direction I eventually saw the red and green running lights and with my bino's the windows too.