Do you think there are aliens?

[A Nerd]

What I meant by philosophical is that space is so vast, out movment is like years to reach say mars for example, that presently, even if there is life in distant space so much time would elapse before we ever met another civilization, ours or theirs would no longer exist. In essence, based on the present, there is no alien life.

[aimlesswanderer]

As someone famous once sorta said "it'd be an awful waste of space if humans were the only intelligent life in the universe".

[KukriKhan]

Yes. They masquerade as "French" and "Texan", to explain away their differences from us. They apparently learned from their Neanderthal experience ('don't consume the host').

[gaelic cowboy]

What I meant by philosophical is that space is so vast, out movment is like years to reach say mars for example, that presently, even if there is life in distant space so much time would elapse before we ever met another civilization, ours or theirs would no longer exist. In essence, based on the present, there is no alien life.

Our present technical knowhow does not preclude a vastly older advanced society meeting us.

[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.

[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.

[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.