Re: OT: interest in UFOlogy

Richard Burke wrote:

In article <mH4aj.17453$Rf5.322@xxxxxxxxxxxx>, Elf <fraud@xxxxxxx> wrote:


Howard Duck wrote:


If any share a tentative interest in UFOs

Once upon a time, ere I knew much of any physics . . . but now? Hardly.


and alien life forms and hybridization with humans,

Now that's an even bigger hoot.

Even granting some vague biochemical similarity (no one has ever come up to
a viable alternative to carbon chemistry as a chemical basis for life), the
thought that evolution would have kicked up aliens with the exact same
DNA/RNA symbiotic mitochondrial chemistry such that we'd be able to
interbreed is, well, beyond breathtaking.


OK, science rant. Sorry.

I only caught this thread when Elf replied, because I'm afraid I have Howard on a kill-file list (sorry Howard!). But actually, you don't need to give up on the whole idea of UFOs just because you know some physics.

I agree that the whole notion of human-alien hybridisation is gloriously entertaining. But the idea that there might be other sentient entities at work in our solar system? That's harder to poo-poo.

Let's get the 'faster-than-light' objection out of the way first. The argument goes, that nothing can travel faster than light and the energies involved in aliens travelling even to a *local* star,let alone to ours, are simply too high to contemplate. Let's agree that's true. The Milky Way is 200,000 Light Years across. Reaching our solar system would take millions or perhaps billins of years - even if they could work out that our particular star was worth a visit. (They couldn't detect any signs of intelligence unless they were within, 150 light years max - assuming they can detect the chemical signatures of industry.)

But now think about our own technology. We have probes (Voyager, Pioneer) that are currently on the edge of interstellar space - and we have only had *any* space technology for just over 50 years out of 4.5 billion years of evolution. Imagine if the industrial revolution had started...

- in 1660 when the Royal Society was formed. 200 years head start. We might by now have micro-probes weighing just a few grammes flying past nearby stars - and telescopes on Earth capable of photographing exo-planets

- in 300 AD, when Roman technology was at its height. Similar, even smaller probes (microgrammes) might now (a) be as intelligent as humans are, (b) be capable of reproducing themselves using local material such as asteroids in other star systems, and (c) have spread themselves across countless star systems within 200 light years of Earth.

- in 500 BC. The Chinese were using bamboo to drill for gas. Metal-working was already a 5,000 year old technology. What if things had kicked off then? By now, we'd be... who knows? Something extraordinary, or dead. But our machines could have reached local solar systems, mined them, reproduced themselves, spread to new solar systems, done the same... We could have ten generations of super-sophisticated, suer-intelligent probes scanning and *functioning* across a zone maybe 200 light years across.

And you need to factor in to this that one of the things these probes might be capable of is carrying a human consciousness - or several - and they could equally be capable of making a body for said consciousness. Is it a machine, is it a human? That rapidly becomes an irrelevant question.

...and that's if industrial technology kicked off on Earth just 2,500 years before it actually did. In 2,500 years' time, it's reasonable to assume that we will be at a similar stage or beyond.

A little extra calculation show that these kinds of *conscious* probes could be all across the galaxy in just a few million years. So, for example, if the dinosaurs had survived and developed technological intelligence 170 million years ago, there could now be machine-made dino-descendants cruising round pretty much every star in our galaxy.

OK, so it hasn't yet happened on Earth. However, if we survive, it's going to - in a few thousand years max, or perhaps less. But if you accept that alien technological intelligence is even remotely *possible* then you have to conclude that either:

- we are the *very first* example of technological intelligence amongst all our neighbouring galaxies - that's potentially several trillion life-supporting stars, and 13,000,000,000 years for something t happen in; or

- life is so vanishingly rare in the universe that out of all the stars, we're the *only* species that has made it even to our limited level; or

- we are the *only* species in a cosmos full of potentially *billions* of technological species that thinks it's worthwhile sending probes to other stars; or

- the cosmos is heaving with intelligence but we are no better equipped to detect it than australopithecus was to detect radio; or

- in some form or another, *they* know we're her but they don't want us to know that *they're* here too.

In this context, 'they' could mean a stone-sized robotic probe hiding somewhere in the Kuiper Belt out beyond Pluto. We're not (necessarily) talking about big triangles cruising over Arizona.

But actually, if you *really* think about it - I mean using maths and hard science - then the weirdest idea of all is that there's nobody here but us chickens. It might be true that we're alone - or it might be true that we have company but we don't yet know or understand it. Either way, the answers are mind-blowing.

As far as UFOs go, therefore, I keep an open mind. The idea that there are aliens wandering round in mile-long triangles and it never hits the news seems like nonsense to me. Alien interbreeding is *clearly* nonsense (well, you'd have to spin such a ridiculous yarn... but who actually *knows*?.

But the idea that there could be alien technology - even alien consciousnesses - in our solar system? To me, a bit of basic maths suggest that it's entirely possible.

Er... Yeah. Not just OT, but WWWWWWWWWOT. Still - interesting, no?

Richard


I agree the probabilities are strong that there are other life forms out there. But the chances of them the first of them to find us being genetically compatible would be incredibly small.

Big question, would they have to be carbon-based?


Francis A. Miniter
.

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