Do you believe in UFO's?

Originally Posted by Arainach

Do I believe in Extraterrestrial Life? Yes. Statistically, it's basically a certainity. Do I believe it has visited Earth? No. That's all but impossible. Absolutely impossible within the laws of Physics as we know them, and even assuming some sort of Faster-than-light travel, it's still almost impossible to believe that they would have known of our existence.

If you say ''all but impossible'', doesn't that mean that it is possible? Either way, there are no laws of physics that we (I) know of that forbid UFOs visiting Earth. It's not very probable that some aliens would actually fly all the way here, but I think saying that it's physically impossible is just disinformation.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Boo-kun

Saucers manned by green men? No, why would they bother on this primitive planet..

Uhh, what makes you say that? Earth (and humanity in particular) is hardly primitive, unless you think that anything below godlike immortality and faster-than-light travel is primitive.

It is not unlikely that 'they' would bother for the same reasons that we do. Even finding some truly primitive organisms in space would have a huge impact; finding actual sentient life on other planets would be one of the most important discoveries in the history of mankind.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Prosthetic

Same here. This is a tricky question to answer simply with a yes or a no.

The first option isn't a direct 'yes,' it's 'they could exist.'

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by Boo-kun

Well, for one, humanity is still quite young. We've made so much technological advancing that evolution can't keep up.

I believe it isn't unlikely that humanity will soon be controlling its own 'evolution,' extreme technological advances being a new form of 'evolution' by themselves. Though that's pretty much a different topic. There's a great Stephen Hawking lecture about this issue, if anyone's interested.

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You would think our distant "cousins" have had their time to build up their smarts, while and before setting out.

Not necessarily. It is just as possible that we are much more advanced than our 'cousins,' and it will be up to us to seek them out. It is also quite possible that their intelligence and way of thinking is very different.

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No, you don't have to be god-like to be advanced, but faster-than-light travel sure could come in handy, unless you want to spend forever traveling from star A to star B.

That's somewhat true, but 'forver' is a pretty relative term, in this case. I don't think it's possible to effectively speculate about lifespans of extraterrestrials, but it's not impossible that they are much longer (or shorter) than ours, and travelling between solar systems is thus possible. There's also the possiblity of generation space-ships and suspended animation.

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My point, since we've had no visitors yet, they either aren't there, they're not interested or maybe they study us behind Mars by watching Oprah..

Well, if by 'visitors' you mean actual alien-manned UFOs near Earth, then I agree.

As for extraterrestrial life in general, there are other possibilities. For one, actual visits might be impossible because we are simply too far apart (in space or time). Thus, effective communication could only be possibly using some kind of (radio) signals. Humanity has been actively looking for those signals for a very brief period of time, so, who knows?

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?