Dick Dasterdly

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/sc...e-2090420.html

Watch out Bil,there could be one arriving on your doorstep very soon.
Would you care to be our spokesperson ?

bil

Jesus ******* christ.

I'd love to meet up with a civilised alien. Who wouldn't? Think of what you could learn.

I won't say it's impossible, but frankly, unless we have got something very, very wrong (cf Einstein & speed of light), or there is a technological detail out there that would turn everything upside down (eg FTL travel), then the chance of the UN's initiative beeing needed is somewhere between '*****' and 'ALL' .

In short it's a pointless waste of funds which are supposed to be in short supply.

rugbymatt

Yadda yadda yadda... all crap all bollocks etc, the REAL story is in the comments bellow..... How conceited is this twat!?

Username: brighterthanyou


I wish I had thought of a username like that! Rugbymatt seems so... lame now!

bil

Well, with a name like that..... I just love his comment

"What will happen is what always does happen: the people who have had contact with aliens are ignored, because their experiences are "impossible" so they "must be insane or lying". "

No, their reports will be dismissed because the odds of there being real are as close to zero as makes no odds.

Personally I'd like to see his user name changed to 'sadderthan you' or just 'Ihavenolife'

Dick Dasterdly

Like yourself Bil, I tend to be somewhat dubious about the possibility, but certainly don't know enough to rule it out.
You seem to judge the possibilities based on the scientific facts that we have come to accept and look on as the norm.
However we are not to know if others don't have a somewhat different perspective and set of values which match up in their World.
For instance any other life forms out there will likely have evolved in a totally different manner to our own, in order to suit their own particular environment.
Who knows they could have a lifespan thousands of times longer than our own.
They may have a respiratory system totally different to ours.
They could be on the point of cracking the problem of travelling at the speed of light.
Possibly many other unknown factors, that we would not naturally understand or easily come to terms with.
It all seems highly unlikely from our own perspective I agree, but not to be entirely ruled out.

rugbymatt

Please don't watch it if you are easily offended... Bill Hicks didn't pull any punches...

jimenato

Complete crap. Everyone knows that the Dutch will speak their language.

Dick Dasterdly

Hillbilly/Redneck aliens,now they really would be interesting.

Never mind I'm sure our planet is safe if they land in the US first.

jimenato

Correct, Someone, somwhere might have invented the transtator.

bil

OK, look at what I wrote. I am prepared to say it might happen, BUT, and it's a massive BUT, I see it as so unfeasible that it really doesn't need much planning for. Anyway, if they came, what's the odds of our planning being valid? Our planning for the flu virus is pretty sketchy, and that's a real thing that is very much a potential threat.

Do you really think that they will be that different?

Consider this. (Not wishing to sound patronising, but if you don't have the science, some of this may not be clear.)

First off, unless they are some weird form of plasma derived life, my money is on them looking and behaving much like us. Why? well, let's look.

1. They will be a carbon based life form.
2. They will operate at similar temps to us.
3. They will be bipedal with two legs.
4. They will be of a similar build to us with variations wrto the mass of
their home planet.

Reasons.

1. Carbon is the ONLY element that can make weak branching bonds.
2. The chemical reactions that sustain life need a liquid medium to work in
that has a very wide ability to dissolve materials.
3. It is improbably that they will not evolve from a water based life form.
Anything that evolves in water has to evolve to look similar because the
forces acting on them will be the same everywhere in the universe.
Aquatic reptiles, fish and mammals ALL look much the same. Legs evolve from fins, fins are placed on the curves of a sine wave for maximum push, and a fish is essentially a sine wave. Bend it thus and you will see that the pelvic and pectoral fins fall on the outer curves, and there are two in a sine wave. Make a fish that needs three pairs of fins and the curve becomes too long and cumbersome. This isn't proof, but it just places the probabilities waaaay over to the likelihood of fish developing as they have here.

Had dinosaurs not been wiped out, they would almost certainly evolved into a small bipedal form that would have filled the niche now occupied by apes.

They would probably have looked like us but with reptilian traces and ancestry.

4. Evolution is the survival of the fittest, and the human build is what worked best.


There are, in the history of evolution many routes by which things might have travelled, but at the end, our way of doing things works. To me the odds are that they would be bipedal, stand upright, have their sensory apparatus on a 'head', drink water and breathe air, because what else is there to breathe or drink?

Extreme environments are far less likely to spawn life as the initial stages are very fragile. In addition, if we accept the theory of panspermia, then all life has a common origen, no matter on which planet it evolves.

bil

A matter transmitter?

OK. Here's your matter transmitter. If a matter transmitter can only transmit from a sending station to a receiving station, then you are no further forward, are you? You can travel to alpha centuri in the blink of an eye, but it will still take at least 50 years to get one there and set it up.

If you can transmit a receiver, how the hell would you aim it over thousands of light years?

OK, let's say we can do that. There are billions of stars in our galaxy alone. How will you have the time to work thru all of those?

Dick Dasterdly

Interesting, thirty years into space on a five year mission and still transmitting and receiving.
Radio signals generated by other planets and solar systems have been picked up for many years.
A radio signal does not neccessarily have to be directed to and from one specific point or planet and can cover a wide spectum of the universe.
Also once out into space there is nothing to attenuate the signal until contact is made with another atmosphere or planet.

jimenato

The transtator doesn't need a receiving station.

http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Transtator

It is fequently used by my favourite alien life form.

rugbymatt

There is a much better picture of her "out there" if you know where to look...

jimenato

Gis a clue!