The treasurer of a pensioners' campaign group has quit his full-time position to form an organisation dedicated to helping humanity establish contact with alien life forms. Phillip Snow, who will continue to assist the North Staffordshire Pensioners' Convention on a part-time basis, believes a rise in UFO sightings is a sign of the dawning of a new age.He is convinced this is a time when first contact will be established with extra-terrestrial beings.Ministry of Defence records show that 158 unexplained sightings were reported nationally in 2005, up from 86 in 2004 and 99 in 2003.Mr Snow, aged 60, of Betley Court, Betley, has set up the New Living group, which is dedicated to easing the public into an era when the prospect of alien sightings will no longer be a source of panic.It will raise awareness of its beliefs and offer advice to anyone concerned about other life forms.The group has no affiliation with the pensioner's convention.

Mr Snow is a devotee of the Mayan calendar, which is a series of prophesies and predictions left by the ancient indigenous people of Central America.Some people believe the Mayans were visited by aliens, who taught them the advanced understandings their race is famous for. Experts are still baffled as to how the Mayans were able to master mathematics, create accurate astrological calendars and build massive pyramids in the jungle.Some believe the Mayan calendar predicts the end of the world in the year 2012 when the calendar - which started in 3115BC - draws to a close.

View: Full Article | Source: This is Staffordshire

Unless there are ETs hiding on the other side of the moon, I don't think we will ever encounter any. The distances are just too great. How do these people miss that very important fact?

It is true that they are a long way away, but considering that we are in our infancy in regards to space travel, there is no way to know what 10,000 years of technological advancement could do for getting from one spot to another.

Einstein thought it was impossible to go faster than light, but the more we look at it, that may not be the case. As we learn new things about the universe and science we find out that our limits are often self imposed. Mathmatics are great, but one unknown factor can change everything.

To assume we now know what the limits to space travel are going to be for the near future are just silly; to think of telling someone from 1850 that we have traveled to the moon and are in space all of the time...have ships that are on the edge of our solar system...all of the advancements we have made...they would think it was impossible, but now it is old hat.

We know enough to never self impose limits. We may not know how to travel faster than light now; but who knows what the future holds.

Consider then that in the future we were able to travel, not at the speed of light, rather at 100 times the speed of light....now that is some kind of warp speed eh?

Even at that speed it would still take 200 years to reach that planet. And don't forget the return trip...another 200 years. So, in summary if we could travel at 100 times the speed of light, our 'investigation' of that planet on a manned mission would take 400 years.

To speculate that there is a civilization out there in the cosmos that has been working on high technology for 10s of thousands of years is just as silly. No, sillier.

But travelling at the speed of light is not something we are going to accomplish. We don't even have the ability with plasma engines to travel at 186,200 mph much less mps.

why so close minded? you dont think its big headed of you to limit what other possible civilizations can do just because we cant do it? thats like me saying nobody in amsterdam can dunk because i cant dunk. what makes humans the benchmark for everything in the universe??? like it was said before, 100 years ago you couldnt have told anyone that we would go to the moon, send robots to mars, land probes on moons of other planets and crash into comets. maybe transversing the distances seem improbable by our standards but you should keep your mind open to possibilities. there's no chance of advancement with a close mind.

joc, not too long ago they said the same thing about the sound barrier.

Because we can't see how to do it now does not mean it is not possible. Look at how many things we have now that would have been considered absolute magic just a century ago.

We are just getting started in understanding the universe around us; to think that somehow we know all we are going to know is just pointless. Who knows what future technology could bring in regards to space travel; things such as wormholes may be closer to the truth than we now know.

I think we should at least begin to understand the universe at least a little bit before we discount what is possible.

Mathmatics that have said FTL travel to be impossible are just that; mathcmatics. By changing a constant or adding a new value those things just go out the window.

In my example I mentioned 10,000 years. Who knows why that type of time could bring. For all we know it is possible to fold space around us whereby any two points in the universe are next to each other. Weirder things could happen...

Everyone who imposes limits on themselves gets proven wrong sooner or later.

100 years ago; not a long time a lifetime and a half ; Id be telling you to saddle up the horses...now we start the car...we've made huge leaps into space but were not quite there. how can you say in another 100 years wed say honey fire up the ship.....

You've obviously never seen my wife drive...

Of course the inventions we have experienced have 'magical' qualities to them compared to the technology of 100 years ago...hell, 20 years ago. But when we are talking about light speed and such it isn't even feasible. I don't believe technology has limits because I don't believe the mind of man has limits, so I am not 'limiting' our advancements...just being realistic about them.

The Folding Space concept is about as looney as it gets though. It isn't scientific at all, it is just some whacked out guys theory. I have even seen it explained by the guy who came up with it...but what...he says..if we fold this piece of paper in half...now the dots are right next to each other. Yeah well that works on paper but in reality space doesn't fold. If it did, everything in the universe would be in a state of constant change. As it is, the consellations are the same as they have always been (as long as we have been looking at them) and will never alter their positions by the universe being folded up like a piece of paper.

I wasn't even going to comment but I can't help myself. In the first place, I am not close minded. I am very open minded. But even an open mind must grasp firmly on the handrails of reality. In the second place, the Amsterdam analogy is flawed. While there are people in Amserdam who may or may not be able to dunk...their is absolutely no evidence of any sort that other 'civilizations' outside of this planet even exist. What makes humans the benchmark for everything in the universe is because:

A. We are on the only known planet in the universe to contain life.
B. Of the life forms on the planet we are at the top of the pyramid.

Woops

What if this is, in fact, not an end of the world countdown, but a countdown to, what we call "first contact" to the aliens.

the point i'm tryin to make is that u seem to want to make humans the law of the universe...we dont even know how big the universe is, if there's limits to it or if it is infinite, and if there's something beyond the universe we exist in. your way of thinkin sounds like people who just KNEW the earth was flat cuz they hadnt explored it all. just because we havent discovered higher life elsewhere or developed the technology to get there does not make it impossible or unrealistic. in fact, its more unrealistic that in the unimagineable size of the universe, our planet is the only to have life anywhere....c'mon.

In my opinion, the universe is infinite. Even if it was not infinite, we still couldn't map it. Universe is supposedly so large, the human mind could probably not perceive its size. Thus, to the conclusion. The possibilities are unlimited, the number of planets and stars are vast, the chances of life on other planets is high. Oooor...we could be the first lifeforms to eve exist within our universe, and sprout out to other life from us.

i question why you consider a 200 year trip such a long time ?

because our lifespan is shorter then that ?

if life does axiext on other planets, who's to say these life form dont live longer ?

maybe on thier planet they live 400 years

maybe they know how to go into suspended animation so they only age 20 years or less during the trip

and of course maybe they know how to make the trip in less then 200 years

What if 'they' exist...but in a star system not 20,000 light years away but say, 124,000 billion light years away? It is all speculation. I personally believe that 'they' don't exist.

That being said. Distances being so great. Consider one other possiblility:

They exist in this dimension....but they 'travel' in a 'different' dimension....and they arrive here virtually instantly back in this dimension, which is the same dimension they left in. So, they would live at the same time in the same dimension in a star system far away in our galaxy or in a different galaxy for that matter....distance wouldn't matter...because they would be traveling in a different dimension....

I might consider that possibility logical because the probablity of other dimensions is intriguing if nothing else.

Right on, "Since804". I would hazard a guess that you have been on the forum since August of 2004.

Very few people know that there is good scientific evidence for the idea that we have been visited by hundreds of different species of star-traveling humanoids, just since 1947. The original source for this is the book The Humanoids, edited by Charles Bowen, published in 1969. These star-traveling humanoids silently levitate close to the ground, and use teleportation for instantly traveling hundreds of light-years. This does not violate relativity, since it is not travel through space-time. Levitation and teleportation have been scientifically proven to exist by Chinese studies. See The Long Journey. Both are powers of the Mind, not of technology. Technology is limited to 0.1 C.

~~~Cebrakon

is anyone forgetting the fact that if you were to travel at light speed in space, that space debris (dust particles, small rocks, etc..) would rip your ship apart in a matter of seconds? we will need to learn how to travel in a different non physical dimension first b4 light speed would be safe enough for use.

You Crazy Bitchs We are just insects compared to the real universe! beleive me i know

yeah i've often thought about that myself...i've read how a screw accidently lost in orbit around earth could really cause some damage to shuttles, satelites and 'nauts. at light speed i cant imagine the energy released

joc, I would like to point out to you that you are forgetting 1 other possible explanation. WORM HOLES.

Now I know scientists have concluded that they aren't stable, but what if the aliens have found a way to, not just make them stable, but actually re-direct there path, which means that they could traverse between tow points instantly.

I now it sounds crazy, but If "they" are advance enough.

I do not think that it is crazy. Mankind is only limited by his imagination, if someone does not think it up then it most likely it will not happen. If thought is creation, then we create what we think. We might not be able to design something significant enough to traverse time and space in large leaps and bounds, but it will happen as long as we can think it up and not destroy ourselves in the progress.

Aliens on the other hand, I have no idea how they think or live, but if they did have the technology to travel across time and space, why would they bother with a backward selfserving, destructive planet like ours. Maybe to save us, enslave us, destroy us, or are just waiting till we can control our greed and become more in tune with universal peace. Who knows, but I hope it is the later.

well now this is interesting , i was watching some sort of show and they were talking about aliens and such and how instead of look of life on other planets we should look more on earth , and then they started talking about these things that live in extreme place and i just rammer the greatest thing


they said that there are probly more strange things here on earth than on any other planet that we could probly get , and then i changed the channel and x-men was on [size=4][font=Century Gothic]

It's been covered...E=MC2
Has everyone forgotten about time dilation? At 99.9999999999% of light speed, the entire observable universe could be circumnavigated in only 60 pilot years. The solar system and even the universe itself would be gone when we got back, but, what the heck!

Interesting link

It is quite true that space dust and cosmic rays pose an insoluble problem, not just for interstellar travel, but also for interplanetary travel. It is very unlikely that astronauts could survive in a space colony on the moon, or survive a trip to Mars. There is an excellent article in the latest issue of Scientific American on this very topic.

Yet the UFOs are here. One more reason for thinking they jump lightyears. This does not require wormholes, but it does require more spatial dimensions in the universe than those our physical instruments can detect. We know that humans can teleport themselves or other objects. Given enough time, we could develop this ability to match that of our visiting humanoids. Teleportation is a power of the mind. Quantum teleportation is a misnomer and has nothing to do with star travel. I have been called a moron on this forum for making such suggestions, but the only morons I see are those who have not done their homework and read the classics in the field of Psychical Research and Ufology.

Our visitors are anthropologists. Like human anthropologists, they have no wish to disturb the primitive culture being studied (that's us). So, they confine their landings to largely uninhabited places. If they wanted to invade or colonize, they could have done so anytime in the past 1.5 billion years. They have evolved beyond such primitive traits as greed and violence. Earth has always been visited occasionally. I think the popularity of Earth for star-travelers since 1947 has something to do with our development of nuclear weapons. Perhaps they want to see if a primitive culture can control such a dangerous technology. If not, they won't save us.

~~~~Cebrakon

Rasani had a good point. Humans have listened to and recorded the "Speech" of Dauphins and Whales for years. And have no Idea what they are talking about.
"IF" we encounter ET , are Humans smart enough to at least say HELLO?
Nope!

The current thinking is that universes are infintesimally small distances from each other. who says they need to travel great distances if they can transpose from their universe to ours ?

And what if we could travel at 4000 times the speed of light?



It is not realistic to impose todays limits on tommorow's world.



I think you've taken the concept far to literally...



But that doesnt matter in this convo. The convo is based on the assumption that they do exist.



Yes, we are the only known planet in the universe to contain life---to US.
Of all the life forms on THIS planet we are at the top of the pyramid. That does not mean its right to be as egocentric as you are being. At one point, it was thought that everything revolved around the Earth, and that the Earth is the centre of the universe. Why? Because people were being egocentric. They had no true reason to believe so.

Actualy it was probably because to them it appeared as if they were. No matter wich direction they looked in they could see stars surrounding them, so to simple minded people that would be the conclusion.

Egocentric? Nah.

The whole point I was trying to make is that the universe is so incomprehensible. It isn't even possible for us to grasp the scope of how large it all is. The distances between stars are vast.
I'm not saying that life doesn't exist somewhere else....only that if it does it isn't interacting with the life forms here.



Oh...well then...okay...well, gosh, I guess I better get the spare room all ready.

There is scientific proof that we have been visited by hundreds of different species of star-traveling humanoids in just the 1947 to 1969 period. No doubt hundreds more since then. The evidence lies in the encounters of humans with UFOs that have landed, and encounters with the humanoids with them. That is why it is so important to go read the case studies. Click on the first link below and find "The Humanoids" in the sidebar to the right. This is a scan of this great and classic of Ufology. It doesn't contain the footnotes, because they wouldn't scan.

In 1947, about 2 weeks after Roswell, Professor Johannis encountered a species completely different from the small grays at Roswell. He was hiking up the high mountain valleys of Friuli, in the extreme NE corner of Italy. Much to his surprise, he found a bright red saucer stuck into the side of the mountain. This was before anything had been printed in Italy about flying saucers. He noticed some small boys in the distance, and he ran over to them, asking what is the meaning of this, and then he realized they weren't boys. They were about 4 feet tall, as I recall, and were a dark green in color, with lemon-lime colored eyes. They were dressed in brightly colored overalls, wblue in color, with red cuffs at the wrists and ankles. They made no attempt to communicate, but they were fascinated by his walking stick, which was an ice pick. One of the "boys" walked up to him and released some powder that partially paralyzed him. They then took his walking stick, climbed back into the saucer. The ship blasted out of the side of the mountain, with boulders flying, completely unharmed, and rapidly disappeared into the distance. This happened about 8 in the morning. It was noon before he was able to walk properly and returned to the Inn at the base of the mountains. Inhabitants of this village had seen the flying saucer fly away. He said nothing about this encounter for years. With the appearance of flying saucer reports in books and magazines, he finally contacted the Italian organization for investigating UFOs, and told them his story.

Professor Johannis is well known and highly respected in Europe.

~~~Cebrakon

How could it appear to them that they are the centre of the universe? Theres no indication that that is the case. The only reason they thought that is because they were egocentric.



But the possibility remains that, no matter the distance, an alien civilization could infact have developped a technology that permits them to travel these distances.

No. Anecdotes (what people say they saw) do not equal scientific evidence, let alone anything approaching "scientific proof" (BTW, *proof* only really exists in mathematics, in science everything is always open to falsification, ie, never completely *proven*). However, I understand that the word "proof" is commonly used to denote what science considers to be objective reality as we know it. Now, you can relate anecdote after anecdote, but without actual scientific evidence, science will not accept UFOs and ET as being a reality. You, yourself, are certainly free to do so...but science does not.

I agree. Even for us lowly homosapiens, the only limiting factor is our short lifespans. At at 40,000 mph, the Voyager crafts will have traveled the four lightyears that approximates the distance to the centauri system in about 68,500 years. While that represents much of the time we have been human, it is only 0.000015% of the age of the Earth. The 30,000 lightyears to the center of the galaxy, 300,000,000 years or 0.06% of the age of the Earth.Were we immortal, this would mean little to a civilization that lives among the stars. Multiply those speeds by a factor of 10, 100 or 1,000 and the times drop quickly. At 40,000,000 mph, or about 11% of C, the trips would be 68 and 300,000 years.

As one reaches relativistic speeds, the numbers change dramatically. Especially viewed from the "pilot time" perspective.

Mortality sucks.

they are here already

they have been here for years

they know how to travel faster then light



1 of my favorite scenes in a movie is in Star Trek IV when the probe is detroying the planet

and Spock tells them it is only because of human arrogance that we assume the message is meant for humans

i believe when it comes to aliens and thier capabilities we assume way too much

we have no idea what they are able to do

What exactly do you mean by "science?" The collective body of professional scientists in universities? It doesn't matter what these idiots accept or do not accept. Read the freaking letter in my sig. file! Galileo could not get a single one of his colleagues at the U. of Padua (where he was a professor when he first built a telescope) to come look through his telescope. The idiots who you think of as science, the idiots who teach in the universities---they are exactly the same idiots who refused to look at Galileo's telescope. (Notice I am not saying you or anyone else on this forum is an idiot.)

Fortunately, the merchant Princes of the Renaissance were not so extraordinarily stupid, not stupid at all, and they gave Galileo a lifetime grant, so he didn't have to teach at the U. of Padua again. Galileo and Kepler had a good laugh at the academics of his time, and I think today's academics are just as comical. They ignore all the available evidence, insisting they will only believe in ET if they send us radio signals! This is like refusing to believe in the existence of ice unless it can be found in the Sahara desert. I think we should undertake a search to see if there are any signs of intelligent life right here on Earth. Not much evidence of it. And all of it purely anecdotal.

I am tired of hearing the psi-cops ignore Psi studies or Ufology because it is "anecdotal." Something is anecdotal if it is not reproducible, if it is just a story that X told Y who told Z. All science is based on the reports of the experience of some researcher. The only thing that keeps it from being "anecdotal" is that other researchers have made similar discoveries. I am not angry at you, Lilly. We may have to agree to disagree.

Pace in Veritas. ~~~~Cebrakon