Extra terrestrial life beyond our blue planet

[math_04]

And this gets at the crux of so many UFO sightings.

I really hope this thread does not become some another debate on the validity of UFOs. So many threads on this forum are all about UFOs.

People should stop linking aliens to UFOs and little green men, there is so much potential for a nice debate on DNA, genetics and all the different ideas floating around related to the idea of extra terrestrial life.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I really hope this thread does not become some another debate on the validity of UFOs. So many threads on this forum are all about UFOs.

People should stop linking aliens to UFOs and little green men, there is so much potential for a nice debate on DNA, genetics and all the different ideas floating around related to the idea of extra terrestrial life.

Do you associate UFOs with aliens?

By my count, 4 out of 28 threads on the first page are dedicated to UFOs.

 

[junglebeast]

It is highly, highly implausible that gtatix looked up just in time to see two planes exhausting their fuel, then pealing off in different directions at angles that, from his vantage point, looked impossible. It just sounds like you're reaching, yes?

I think you mean "improbable" not "implausible." Implausible means "not physically possible." My explanation is certainly possible/plausible.

Statistically speaking, the probability of observing an exact event in a real number space is infinitesimally small for any event, even if you are just sampling a well conditioned normal distribution! So, while it is true that it has low probability...there was also an infinitesimally small probability that I would wake up this morning at exactly 9:36:01:..., yet I did.

Essentially, to apply statistics in a meaningful way here, one would have to ask "how likely is it that any human being on any night of the year on any year ever happens to see 2 planes flying away in the sky?"

 

[DaveC426913]

I think you mean "improbable" not "implausible." Implausible means "not physically possible."

No. Implausible means 'difficult to believe', which is exactly what I meant to say.

It is (at least, in the general scheme of things) hard to believe that what he saw was an event like two planes venting fuel andf then pealing off in different directions.

The reason it is implausible as an explanation of the eyewtiness account is because it is improbable.

Statistically speaking, the probability of observing an exact event in a real number space is infinitesimally small for any event, even if you are just sampling a well conditioned normal distribution! So, while it is true that it has low probability...there was also an infinitesimally small probability that I would wake up this morning at exactly 9:36:01:..., yet I did.

Essentially, to apply statistics in a meaningful way here, one would have to ask "how likely is it that any human being on any night of the year on any year ever happens to see 2 planes flying away in the sky?"

This is exactly what I'm saying, yes.

 

[DaveC426913]

The upshot here is:

No one is saying gtatix did not see a UFO.

No one is denying that gtatix saw something very strange and likely very rare.

But what he saw was so rare in fact, that any explanation of it is likely to sound completely implausible because it will require some highly unlikely events.

But we know for a fact that some very unlikely events did happen (even if it is simply the conflagrence of a few rather more common things such as planes venting fuel and a peculiar angle from which they are observed.)

Witnessing a pair of planes venting fuel etc. etc. is likely extremely rare and therefore pretty implausible.

Witnessing UFO is somewhere between 'incredibly rare' and 'zero' (if there are no UFOs then the occurence of the event is zero) and therefore extremely implausible.

We go with the one that is less implausible.

 

[junglebeast]

Oops, my bad with the definition of implausibility.

Witnessing a pair of planes venting fuel etc. etc. is likely extremely rare and therefore pretty implausible.

Now hold on...who said anything about venting fuel? This is what it looks like when fuel is vented:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/F-111-Fuel-Dump,-Avalon,-VIC-23.03.2007.jpg

Ok, that's pretty impressive...not at all like the "subtle fuzzy red glow" in the incident report. I was just referring to the natural glow that comes from a jet engine. It was reported that there were two red glows close together, which then veered off in different directions. All that is required is to have 2 F16's flying side by side, as they often do, before veering off.

Observe the red glow:
http://www.tristesse.com/~keith/airshows/f16-1.jpg

For a brighter red glow, they can turn on the afterburners:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/FA18_on_afterburner.jpg

 

[DaveC426913]

Now hold on...who said anything about venting fuel?

My bad. We're even.

 

[fillindablank]

Life must exist elsewhere. There isn't only one of anything in the universe so it makes no sense that there is only one planet in the universe that has life.

 

[milos92Serbia]

What would iyou say if you see green light on the sky at night , twice the size of a star ,
going much faster than an airplane moving left and right how suddenly disappears? I saw that two times , so as my friends who were with me at the time. The people just can't understand the universe and that there might be at least 10 civilizations only in our galaxy.
If aliens really landed on our planet , with that kind of tehnology they could destroy us in seconds - why didn't they ?

 

[DaveC426913]

Life must exist elsewhere. There isn't only one of anything in the universe

How would you know? If there's only one of something, the chances are highly unlikely it would be nearby.

BTW, there's only one DaveC426913.

so it makes no sense that there is only one planet in the universe that has life.

The universe is not obliged to make sense.

 

[fillindablank]

How would you know? If there's only one of something, the chances are highly unlikely it would be nearby.

and it would then be exceedingly rare proving my point. Since there isn't one of anything in the known universe other than a planet with life I would say it's much more likely that we aren't unique rather than we are. And there are soon to be 7 billion virtually identical to DaveC426913 (just with a different number).

The universe is not obliged to make sense.

Obliged? Maybe not. But every day as we learn more, more of it does make sense than not. If it doesn't make sense it's because we don't know enough yet.

 

[DaveC426913]

Since there isn't one of anything in the known universe other than a planet with life

This is simply nonsense. How can you make such a leap of faith?

Obliged? Maybe not. But every day as we learn more, more of it does make sense than not. If it doesn't make sense it's because we don't know enough yet.

Precisely. Which is why things that (right now) don't make sense (such as us being alone) are no indication that those things (i.e. us being alone) are wrong.
As we know more, it will begin to make sense why we're alone.

I'm not arguing that we are alone, I'm merely pointing out that your logic is flawed.

 

[TalonD]

I there was also an infinitesimally small probability that I would wake up this morning at exactly 9:36:01:..., yet I did.

EsQUOTE]

Assuming you sleep 8 hours per night. That probability is 1:1,728,000 unless your clock shows tenths of a second?
what is the definition of infinitesimal?

with aplogies to Drake...
Life can exist in what we would consider inhospitable environs such as the bottom of the ocean and under the Antarctic ice cap.

There is evidence of past life on Mars (the fosolized bacterium on a martian rock found in Antarctica) unproven I admit. but not debunked either.

Out of 9 planets, one has life for certain (Earth) one may have had life (Mars) that's at least one out of nine, possibly two.

an estimated 80% of stars have planets. An estimated 100 billion stars in our galaxy yeilds 80 billion planets.

At least one extraterrestrial planet is known to have water which is normally required for life here on Earth.

the universe is only 13.7 billion years old and the Earth is 5.5billion so it seems we are here remarkably soon after the initial inflation period.

The universe has a minimum radius of curvature of 100billion light years with galaxies distributed in a roughly homogenious distribution amounting to how many possibilities?


all this leeds me to think that the probability that life exists no where else in the uiverse but here on Earth is infinitesimally small.


but then that's just me... :)