Do you think there are aliens?

[A Nerd]

If you consider how fast light takes to reach us from say the other civilizations home world, light speed according to some being impossible, there is no chance of a meeting. You would have to resort to theroy to meet a vastly superior race to make this possible. Also, if another race is capable of reaching us in a reasonable amount of time, as of yet they have had no desire to. Unless you beleive in alien abductions and their supposed experiments.

[gaelic cowboy]

If you consider how fast light takes to reach us from say the other civilizations home world, light speed according to some being impossible, there is no chance of a meeting. You would have to resort to theroy to meet a vastly superior race to make this possible. Also, if another race is capable of reaching us in a reasonable amount of time, as of yet they have had no desire to. Unless you beleive in alien abductions and their supposed experiments.

People also said that the human body could not take the stress of a train journey at 100mph once.

We may never go faster than light but that does not mean we will not find a way beyond it the Quantum world seems to hold the most promise at the moment.

If the aliens were just using there version of Newtons Laws to move about at very slow speeds they will still fill the galaxy eventually.

[A Nerd]

I guess I'm just a pessimist and impatient. I just seems that to move though time and space in reaonalbe and understandable means would require some miracle device that would alter the laws of physics as we know them. I realize that outer space is full of physics we yet to understand, but the sheer enormity of space just seems to maintain my opinion that relations with any alien race, near or far, advanced or not is not possible at our given time. Sure technology has advanced quite quickly over the past 60 years but computers and infinity are two very different things.

[KukriKhan]

We are not ready to meet a "people" who have mastered travel at the speed of light (mentally, politically, scientifically, militarily, religiously)... and if they are anything like us, we should hide when/if they show up. Just ask Megas Methuselah about how "discovered" humans have fared at the hands of their discoverers.

[A Nerd]

One would hope that such an advanced society would not resort to such ancient notions of conquest and subjugation. That seems to be a human trait.

[Ibn-Khaldun]

I think advanced alien civilizations exist somewhere in the Universe.
And even if they watch us I doubt they want to reveal themselves to us currently.

[Rhyfelwyr]

Well the pyramids didn't build themselves...

[LittleGrizzly]

Well the pyramids didn't build themselves...

lol, various youtube video's are coming flooding back to me....

Whilst I never put much stock in it I always liked the idea of Aliens interacting with us thousands and thousands of years ago, maybe even being involved in our evolution and teaching the first langauge ect.

I think there has to be Aliens out there somewhere in the vastness of space whether they have the means to get to us from where they are is another matter and whether they would want to, we wouldn't have much to offer a speicies that can traverse huge distances of space in little time, except maybe slave labour, resources would be easily accessible from other planets I imagine.

[Jolt]

Well the pyramids didn't build themselves...

Of course not, the egyptians had Caustic Soda and Mineral Geosynthethis knowledge already, making building pyramids a heck lot easier, and not needing alien help.

[gaelic cowboy]

One would hope that such an advanced society would not resort to such ancient notions of conquest and subjugation. That seems to be a human trait.

One would hope so but it is not a thing I would bet the house on to quickly notions of peaceful aliens would be human trait too the chance is maybe 50/50 of death by contact.

In any closed eco-system the introduction of an exotic species will mean the extinction of the weaker one. This extinction is not necessarily caused by predation one may be better at using the resources at there disposal to survive hence leaving none for the weaker one.

[A Nerd]

One would hope that interaction between established civilizations would include some capacity at reason that lower species, like animals, lack. This coupled with our own understanding of the evolution of human nature and all its vices would lead me to believe, hopefully, an encounter not by chance would lead to some formal conversation that could benefit both civiliazations. Even if one is less developed than the other, for the more advanced culture made perhaps a huge effort to reach the lesser developed one. It would seem the more advanced civilization from across space would not invade another merely for slaves or resources (considering the benifits of occupied and unoccupied worlds and there being so many of them). Maintaining an empire on such an enormous scale just seems impossible and pointless. There are diseases to concern oneself with, but with the capacity to effortlessly span space one would think that disease wouldn't be too much of a problem either. But I digress, erratication of the lesser civilization would be swift anyway, again due to the before mentioned.

edit: apologizes, I posted before I read the one above.

[Megas Methuselah]

We are not ready to meet a "people" who have mastered travel at the speed of light (mentally, politically, scientifically, militarily, religiously)... and if they are anything like us, we should hide when/if they show up. Just ask Megas Methuselah about how "discovered" humans have fared at the hands of their discoverers.

You're a very wise man, Kuk.

[Viking]

Also, if another race is capable of reaching us in a reasonable amount of time, as of yet they have had no desire to.

That's thinking of an entire specie as a single organism, and humans at least cannot be explained in such a manner. Different individs have different interests. That they have the technology to travel light years away from their host planet doesn't mean that's something they do often; they would probably need a good reason since it could be rather expensive. Perhaps they just prefer to stay on the ground. Humans can travel to the moon; Mars too if we wanted to....but we don't do any of this at the moment.

It's also not a given that we have been that easy to detect, nor, that if any greatly technologically superior civilization exists out there, that it actually know about us - that they actually spend enough time on research on the topic to discover our presence and learn anything at all about our solar system.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Right now Humans can't travel to the moon, actually. There are numerous projects under way to restore that “capability” but right now we can't do much more than take the Sojuz shuttle between ISS and Earth.

While the prospects of “some kind of alien” are looking good (assuming that we ignore French and Texan ones who merely behave in an alien fashion) those of “intergalactic travel” or “alien encounters” are much less good. So far our best bet of weird quantum physics dimensions travel is that you essentially do unto a proton what would melt you out of existence were such a thing done unto your yourself. (Nevermind the outrageous amounts of energy that are required to get you colliding with something roughly your own size at roughly the same amount of eV per relevant particle in your body.)

[Viking]

Right now Humans can't travel to the moon, actually. There are numerous projects under way to restore that “capability” but right now we can't do much more than take the Sojuz shuttle between ISS and Earth.

Oh, c'mon; you know what I meant. All we need to do is to initiate a project, and we can. We have/know the technology required. The same thing could have happened to alien civilizations - they visited a few alien solar system, and thought they were awesome since they could; but eventually they got bored and didn't like the costs that came with it.

While the prospects of “some kind of alien” are looking good (assuming that we ignore French and Texan ones who merely behave in an alien fashion) those of “intergalactic travel” or “alien encounters” are much less good. So far our best bet of weird quantum physics dimensions travel is that you essentially do unto a proton what would melt you out of existence were such a thing done unto your yourself. (Nevermind the outrageous amounts of energy that are required to get you colliding with something roughly your own size at roughly the same amount of eV per relevant particle in your body.)

There are also the ideas of hibernation, multi-generation space ships etc. We don't have to rely on too exotic theories for interstellar space travel to be possible.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Oh, c'mon; you know what I meant. All we need to do is to initiate a project, and we can. We have/know the technology required. The same thing could have happened to alien civilizations - they visited a few alien solar system, and thought they were awesome since they could; but eventually they got bored and didn't like the costs that came with it.

Yes. Which says exactly what about space travel by aliens? That it may not happen even if it is possible?

There are also the ideas of hibernation, multi-generation space ships etc. We don't have to rely on too exotic theories for interstellar space travel to be possible.

Which is no less exotic, I'm sure. Seriously: hibernation is not an option if you want to survive your travels: one needs to eat in order to hibernate; and in order to eat one needs to wake up. So at best you merely prolong the eat-sleep cycle, which incidentally makes hibernation only practical for small-ish aliens because you cannot tend any crops or similar whilst hibernating.

EDIT: There are various other interesting Health & Safety issues regarding to hibernation & space travel, too. Chief among which is that you no longer have the environmental sanity-checks of seasons, gravity, etc. etc. to trigger interrupts in your hibernation, and keep your organs healthy.

[A Nerd]

Not to mention even if you did travel to an alien world in hibernation at the speed of light, by the time you returned to earth or vice versa thousands of years will have passed. The founders of the project will be long dead and the space traveler will be out of place and lose his/her understanding of the civilization he/she left.

[Centurion1]

it is imo conceited to believe that aliens are watching us. why us of all people? its ridiculous.

and as to faster than light travel it is impossible but there are certain things and laws of physics that could be exploited as gaelic said, in quantum physics. think of the universe as a piece of paer. now using a specific type of machine or engine (dont ask me how but theoretically it is possible) you crumple up that piece of paper and do two things as well, 1. on a small scale so as not to disrupt the universe and 2. not make it permanent. then if you can manage that you need to develop some way to navigate the CReases in the crumpled up piece of paper. Otherwise you could get "lost". IF you can do that then go write your name down as the greatest mind in the history of mankind.

all speculation of course.