Okay, not really (or really, depending on what you already believe. But I have a question. I'm very interested in the nature of suggestion and belief, so I'd be interested to know this: What would it take to make you believe that/or constitue proof that a UFO from another planet or dimension had actually landed? It's a lot harder to prove to something like that irrefutably than you might think. I personally am a believer BTW, but that isn't it to say I believe all cases, or necessarily think that what is real is all from distant planets. Anyway, it gets harder and harder to prove anything. Obviously simple thing are out. You can't use anecdotal evidence. There are a handful of witnessed observations in the papers - but the people who wrote the stories and told them in the first place could easily have been lying or wrong. It's not proof. You can't even rely on your own sightings. You to can be just a bad witness. You see something in the sky. - Whilst it's up there, no matter how many weird things it seems to do and what it looks like, it's still unidentified. It could be anything, including a 'real' ufo, but that again proves nothing. Knowing how nowadays things can *seem* to be made to happen, how people can create illusions, and how drugs can create false memories, what would prove to you 10000% that you had seen an extra terrestrial vehicle? What would make you personally believe in UFO's and aliens? MelT
The only way i would beleve in ufo's is if a little green dude come up to me with big black hollow eyes saying " MY NAME IS ET AND I NEED TO PHONE HOME ".
Interesting question, but I think we should clear up the terminology: UFOs do exist. Remember, UFO is just an acronym for "unidentified flying object," which have been seen and documented by everyone from potato farmers to military officers. The question is not whether UFOs exist, but what they are. MelT, you seem to connect UFOs with alien spacecraft. This is what you're seeking to prove and, you're right, proving it would be tough. Since scientific evidence is derived from controlled, closed systems--and the sky isn't--no amount of sightings would prove UFOs to be alien spacecraft. I think you would need to capture a UFO and show that it was either created or piloted by an extraterrestrial intelligence. Most people would consider that proof.
Well, this is the thing - is that proof? See, I'm a cynical soul and if something landed on my roof I'd be thinking that it was something cooked up by my government as a ploy rather than aliens. It might not be, obviously, but it's still not 100% proof. Does it have to look a different way? Do you need to see it land on the roof? MelT
Runner, with all due respect you misunderstand my position. I'm not here to prove or disprove, I already believe, it's not about that. I'm interested in what's proof for other people. I don't care what UFO's are. To me, something coming from another dimension, or even our own future, is just as 'alien' as something from another planet, possiibly even more so. And I agree that no amount of sightings will provide any kind of proof. Let me try to be clearer. Say for arguments sake you have two scenarios; 1) You have the UFO, you personally, not the government. You found it in a field. It's on your bench, you've got the wrenches out and you want to somehow prove that it's not from this present earth/dimension/planet. How would you go about it? What would finally prove to you that you weren't working on something made secretly by our government? 2) The government announces one day that they do have aliens, alien contact and a ship or two to play with. They show films of it on TV. Is that proof to you? Do you see what I'm getting at? I'm not here to debate their source, I'm interested in personal belief. I'm not trying to make out that everything oculd be a government conspiracy either BTW, the above UFO idea is an example of belief, that's all. MelT
if i spent the day on an alien planet, flew their ships, and got something to play with like a jet pack or a book on the history of everything; then i would be convinced. i already believe theres aliens, theres just too much space to say we are the only ones here. that would change alot of things, and there are lots of variables. but that would be plenty of proof imo. interplanetary diplomacy, war, trade, technology, culture, religion, history. everything would change, it would be such a shock to humanity, i wonder if we could even handle such a change?
1) I'll believe it when I see it with my own eyes. But there are a lot of things that might tip me off. The pod might contain different material than we are used to. New amino acids, silicone based bio matter, propulsion systems powered by super heavy elements, ACID FOR BLOOD!? Who knows what those aliens are playing with. So yeah, send that sucker to the lab. 2) I don't believe anything the government says. 3) That would change my mind.
excuse me while i just jump in after reading the original post... to pick at the words for a moment. a "UFO" stands for "Unidentified Fly Object" so unless you've identified every particle that has "flown" here from exterior to earth's atmosphere, then theres just no way there arent UFOs galore! and thats not even touching all the Unidentified objects that orginiate from earth itself.... and i am including ones from generally unknown to us inteligences too! indeed the ocean of questionable, even refutable evidence is staggering, and thus, its no wonder or surprise as to why there are so many disbelievers yep, mental implants. but going down that road, you can doubt all experience, so lets table that, and lend a little credence to personal experience, at least for the person who experienced it. (aledgedly experienced?) drugs, false memories? i dunno... an old firend once tried to explain to me that the feelings and emotions i got whilst on drugs weren't real, that they were fake. i got what he was on about, but i dont think he realised i could acknowledge that they came from the substance taken. though by no means "10000%", i HAVE seen many, many extra terrestrial vehicles. you only need look, even with the naked eye, up to a cloudless sky at night, and you can see them, loads of them. twinkling as they may do. for most, their motion may not seem apparant to you, but watching for more than a glance, you may spot a few that appear to be in motion (though really they all are, just that our experience of time being on such a smaller scale to notice), and these that more readily appear to be in motion, are quite probably our own local satelites. some of the slightly slower moving ones, two of which would be perhaps the two brightest in the night sky (excluding the moon) would perhaps be mars and venus. maybe you can see jupiter and saturn, these are quite large vehicles, though far far smaller than the other bright dots that are emiting their own light and are just much further away. between here and there, there are many, many more objects. some, with their own sources of fuel that propel them in directions, others (and heres where people can more easily cast doubt upon this) have inteligent direction and complex "mechanisms". to illustrate further, i turn once again to "The Drake Equation". Its so completely worth your time to spend a little while contemplating it's meaning. but if its a bit too nerdy for you, simply return to the clear night sky and gaze upon all those little dots. all those little dots you see are much like our local star, "the sun", or "sol" as i prefer to call it. and as many of them as there are, there are just as many, and more, galaxies. A galaxy being the big swirling mass of stars, locally, "The Milky Way" as we call it, which if you're lucky, should appear to you as a giant streak of glow in the sky. that's alot of stars. Including the little ones that after recent uninteligeable reclassification that i find further languageably restrictive, there are several thousand lumps of matter, planets if you want to call them so, that are in various orbits around even just sol. now multiply this up, to include the asumption that theres just as many, maybe typically less, probably typically much more of these lumps in orbit around all those other dots. "Life", that which we assume is required to make all these little mechanical devices that we can then describe as "UFOs" is capable of starting in far stranger places than we in our current forms find comfortable or even tollerable. at the lips of subaquativ volcanic vents, or the insides of nuclear reactor chambers for two examples. and further, it's not just carbon based. there are several examples of silicon based life, and i'll bet it goes further to even boron and nitrogen and many other elements too, many of which would find our atmosphere just as inhospitable as we would find standing on the surface of sol. further still, there are many, many more lumps of matter floating about that are not in orbit. these are often called "nomad planets", and it has been said that they outnumber the orbital planets by many factors. not only this, but who's to say it takes a lump of matter at all!? telescopes and spectral analysis rather strongly suggests that there is loads of alcohol and sugar floating about in space, does that not sound rather convincingly like there being a vastly staggering amount of biological matter out there? life could start from the gases and heat of a nebula, or in the soup of some long dead biovegetation or something yet even more bizzarre and unfamiliar to life as observed on this planet. so even when you consider the drake equation, you are still only scratching the surface of how much life is out there, let alone how many of them are running around with space sailing vehicles and walkie talkies. so, with all this information i've just blasted at yas, is it not indeed very very very probable that there are many, or even at least one more example of something, that like us, has made the leap to launch a unit or two out of the orbit of the lump of matter of their origin? note, i have not said yet whether i believe if we have been visited by "little green men" to use the old saying. picture a 17 limbed, 307-309 multi brained semi transparent entity that has freedom of motion through a gas giant and can... well... the faculties of such a being, if indeed such a thing exists, are beyond what could be sufficiently expressed with our language and even our understanding of our own language. but suffice to say, it's thoughts and love are with you. and again, what of the plannets and stars. what's at the centres of these large celular organisms? a nucleus? Life. Contemplate the star. a vehicle. is identification necessary? considering the size of our database, considering how large and further the universe and information energy goes, is identification by our own local brained database really significant by any means or modes?
I seriously doubt that Earth is the only planet that can sustain life in the entire universe. But who knows if the other life out there is evolved enough to be able to build a spacecraft, and fly it through the vast expanses of space to get to our planet and be seen by a human. Personally, I belive that some species are able to travel through space. But, they would have to have to know how to: 1) move much faster than the speed of light. 2) be able to use wormholes or something like that or, 3) be able to live much, much longer than human beings But if a lifeform knew how to travel through space, why would it come to earth? The universe is huge, and there are probably much more interesting places than earth. I dunno I'm just rambling now. btw digit, I love to read your posts
Hi, yes, all good, thoughtful posts. I must return to my original idea though, in that I'm not out to prove or disprove alien life - I find it hard to believe that there could not be. What I was asking was what would it take to prove that any such vehicle had landed here to your own satisfaction. It seems that only personal, direct examination of the evidence would suffice for most people, and I'd have to agree. I personally would want to take the UFO apart and decide for myself what it was, because no matter how much I might respect science, I don't respect governments. Even if they said the sky was blue I'd have to hang out of my window, just to check, so if they actually said one day that they had a UFO, I'd believe it was disinformation rather than the truth. The pont of posting was to see how far people would trust the word of another, or even their own eyes, knowing in this modern world how much we all are prey to disinformation. Are we massively more cynical than our parents, or our grandparents? I think so. I think, especially with all the guff we were fed that has taken us into at least 2 wars, that people are far, far more cynical and savvy than they ever were. If we then transpose this same argument into questions like, if someone calls themselves the Second Coming, or the next Buddha, then in today's world they'd have a hell of a struggle on their hands trying to convince the world that this was so, at least in the western world. I wouldn't believe in any miracle I read about, or saw on the news. Like the UFO, I'd want to examine it fully and have it proved to me I could never accept anything on faith alone. MelT
4) live so close, none of the above need apply. ** "time travel"? bending through dimensions? are you kidding!? exploration. look around to what we know already of most planetary bodies. most seem to be relatively innert, lifeless (as we generally know it & can percieve it) barron rocks, balls of gass, frozen lumps of matter, or the ocassional volcanic activity. all the things on earth make it easy to understand why its a tourist trap. from this point of view. also, maybe other places are more interesting, but just not discovered yet, maybe they are, and this is just another place to visit. you dont always spend your time at the most interesting place you know of do you? anyways, i actually came back here to add something to the expansion of "visitors" and what is a "UFO", heh, or even an "IFO". the spores of mushrooms, can survive in the vaccuum of space, and are viable for longer than anyone has yet set a best before date for. how about that for travel. a species oneness, that has found a way of traveling without leaving home. and depending on how far down the mushroom hole you've gone, you may agree, that there is more than just a modulation of our own inteligence when we consume them, but there is an inteligence itself there. further, the "lattice", perhaps not the best word, but does better than any other i have at the moment, the lattice structure of the underground fibres that make up the main part of the body of the mushroom entity, can be directly correlated with; The structure of the universe, the pattern made by all the galaxies when you zoom out to a sufficiently massive scales of wide perception. The structure of the human brain. all the neuro pathway connections. The strucutre of the Internet. so, if you want to get to grips with an inteligence of extra terrestrial origin, you need look no further than your local golf course, forrest, feild or garden! and maybe you need not even go that far! ... how many limbs!? how many brains!? also, as for something a little more familiar and tangible for yas to mull over... it's been a few years now since we've seen the japanese show off their invisability suit. if we can do it, surely, it's not beyond even the most limited imagination, that another spacefareing bipedal species (if such exists), can do the same. but maybe they don't even need to! in "What the bleep do we know" which i only recently saw, it explained how when the spannish were traveling to the americas, the people living there at the time simply could not see the boats approaching them, it was outside their daily lives, so extreme to them, that they could not see them until a shaman awoke them to this great novelty, this great new grand opening of possability. are we too, as equally culturally blinded to the presence of aliens all around us? are we too staring up at the oceans of the skys, blinded to a cluttered highway of space travel? the astronauts have "leaked" many reports of "weird things" going on up above our atmosphere & stratosphere, footage has even been seen (but we all know the flaw of irrefutability with that one), and so, are we all awaiting the touch of a shaman's finger to our third eyes to accept the greater possabilitys? again though, i plug the Drake equation. as taken from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation and indeed do a search for "Drake Equation" or "Astrosociobiology" in your prefered search engine to discover a broader base on this. and remember, this is just an interesting base, it's not THE answer. i fully expect you to find flaws in this and expand upon it or improve it, as i and many others have, hence why there are several variations of the drake equation in circulation.
i would only belive it if i saw one in front of me, it slaped me in the face, and i had three different doctors test me to see if i was on any drugs, and all would come out negative.
ok, yeah, i got a bit carried away. if it truely wasi/is "alien" life, then perhaps it would be too "alien" for us to reccognise it? however if a little more conventionally familiar and reccognisable as life from another planet... sorry, i can't help but go back to mushroom spores. they're here! lol. but forcing myself back to the confines of the topic you seek.... heck, ok, i'll say i'm already convinced they're here. disinformation or not. it seems to make sence. if you met them, you could be convinced you didnt, if you didnt, you could be convinced you did. memory of personal contact experiences are not strong enough evidence for me.