Pentagon to reveal vehicles not made on this Earth

[Felya]

That's a good assumption though because in order to survive a species will want to maximize the amount of resources they have for avoiding maximum entropy.

But, it’s not... I don’t think you realize the scope of what that entails. You are assuming aliens would be similar to humans. What need is there for resources, when you can store and exert enough energy, to fly across the universe? All the oil in the world would be worthless... you most definitely would need a reusable resource. Even to tap energy from another planet, you need that planet to have resources, that would justify the energy exerted during space travel.

Than again... maybe quantum gravity, will lead to an infinite energy resource. If that’s the case, there is no value in anything. There is no hunting other planets for resources. Infinite energy will devalue everything...

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It is not really about which element is more common, but the fact that we are carbon based. Observers exist on a bell curve. If you pick one at random, you are most likely to pick one that is near the middle, i.e. most common type. We humans were picked at random and happen to be carbon based, so it follows that we are most likely of the most common type.

We are not picked at random... when is the one choice, random? lol

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypoth...f_biochemistry

[Endus]

It is not really about which element is more common, but the fact that we are carbon based. Observers exist on a bell curve. If you pick one at random, you are most likely to pick one that is near the middle, i.e. most common type. We humans were picked at random and happen to be carbon based, so it follows that we are most likely of the most common type.

This is selection bias, in a nutshell. It's a fallacy.

It's no different from a lottery winner wondering who other poor people don't just play the lottery if they want to not be poor; they won, so how hard can it be?

Nothing about our emergence as an intelligent species states that anything about that process was somehow likely, or the most common path to that outcome. Particularly as we still know essentially fuck-all about abiogenesis, the process by which life began. If we did, we could replicate that process under lab conditions, right, and create new life? Plus, apparently all life on Earth shares a genetic connection, which strongly suggests that we're all descended from one single instance of abiogenesis. In all our planet's existence.

Maybe there's a way easier path to life on some other chemical basis, in conditions we'd find completely inhospitable. We can't even figure out how life started here, so of course we can't extrapolate on how it could have happened anywhere else.


I do want to make a side note that there's another big reason why we might not see neighbours out there among the stars. The Great Filter. Something stops species from crossing those interstellar gaps. No clue what it might be, or if we're even past it. It could be behind us, meaning we're unique, or it could be before us, and we're basically doomed. Or it might not even be extinction-related; it may be that technology to upload minds into a simulated universe is easier than interstellar travel, and that as species reach that point, it's just easier to deconstruct their planetary rings into a Dyson shell around their star, for energy to fuel the Great Simulation. This would have the additional benefit of causing their star to go "dark", making it WAY less likely that any species that avoid this would ever pop into their region of space looking for resources.

Hell, maybe that's dark matter. All the billions of species that have already gone "dark" and entered their own digital immortal afterlives.

[Themius]

Drones could not have done what those “UFO’s” did in the recent videos released by the military. Nothing we have on this planet could have.

So, yeah, still technically a UFO, but who was piloting it.... cause no human could have been, not at those speeds and how quickly it was descending then stopping on a dime. It would have killed any human.

This video?

[Endus]

Well of course it is not statistically significant with sample size of one, but calling it fallacy is not fair.

It's the simple truth.

You cannot use the existence of carbon-based life on Earth as an argument that it must be easiest for life to form based upon carbon, rather than some other chemical basis. You have one data point. You cannot extrapolate anything from that.

It's like buying your first lottery ticket, and winning the jackpot. That doesn't mean lottery tickets usually pay off with the jackpot. You can't use that one instance to claim it's the most common outcome.

Except that it is the only known way of it happening, and us knowing for a fact that it has happened this way at least once. Why would we start from the assumption that we are somehow an outlier?

You cannot even begin the discussion as to whether or not we're an outlier until you've got additional data points to draw trendlines. It's a discussion you literally do not have the necessary information to even begin discussing it.

[PC2]

You are assuming aliens would be similar to humans.

Yes of course, they would have to operate based on our only good explanation of general intelligence which is based on the universality of computation and Turing equivalence.

What need is there for resources, when you can store and exert enough energy, to fly across the universe?

The need for resources is based on the fact that flying across the universe and doing everything we want requires energy and energy requires resources. The only way to avoid an expansionary policy is to exploit infinite values such as those found in an infinitesimally small and infinitely dense singularity.

you need that planet to have resources, that would justify the energy exerted during space travel.

Yes unless you are just sending a probe purely for exploratory purposes and for scientific inquiry.

Than again... maybe quantum gravity, will lead to an infinite energy resource.

Nobody knows much about quantum gravity so until someone makes that theory then we can't say what it will lead to.

[Forogil]

There is also the fact that on the cosmic time scale, our Universe has not even hit the hands of the cosmic midwife in the birthing ward, so to say. We could very well be the first planet that life has emerged in the entire Universe, and that actually excites me quite a lot. We get to be the precursors. We might literally get to seed the Universe with life and make it in our image without resistance from other forms of life.

Sort of, but "first" is not a well-defined concept according to relativity and cosmology.

We might be a planet that developed life without having one before us; and being able to seed parts of the Universe with life. However, we cannot reach all of the observable Universe and if we do we might run into other life that also developed without having life before them.

I don't think hiding your star behind a Dyson shell would protect you from sufficiently advanced civilizations. You can't hide the gravity well, and someone will notice it eventually.

You cannot hide the energy either, and a Dyson shell might even attract the attention of those civilisations, and it could be a bright light in The Dark Forest.

[Easo]

speed of sound = ~767mph
fastest land vehicle currently = 763.035 mph
fastest jet = 7000 mph

Gotta correct you on that. SR-71 is still the fastest jet plane flown and it managed 2200 mph "only". Rocket-powered plane record is 4500 mph by X-15. Everything else is not manned and we are basically talking about ICBM's during re-entry phase, where they do have roughly the speed you wrote, depending on the model.

[Orange Joe]

Gotta correct you on that. SR-71 is still the fastest jet plane flown and it managed 2200 mph "only". Rocket-powered plane record is 4500 mph by X-15. Everything else is not manned and we are basically talking about ICBM's during re-entry phase, where they do have roughly the speed you wrote, depending on the model.

Now that you mentioned it I just searched for fastest air speed and got this as a result.

https://www.nasa.gov/missions/research/x43-main.html

[Themius]

No. I haven’t seen that one. I believed it was called the Tic Tac, where they said the object dropped from 60,000 feet to just 50 feet in a matter of seconds. A human pilot couldn’t survive such an acceleration and sudden stop, in any aircraft we have made on Earth.

This one then.

[Fargus]

That's a good assumption though because in order to survive a species will want to maximize the amount of resources they have for avoiding maximum entropy.

That's an assumption born out of how we (or rather, you) think, though. And even then, they'd have tech that'll allow them to get 100% efficient energy from their local star. Why would they need to colonise everything to survive?

[Themius]

Here’s an article on it:

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019...underwood.html

Exactly what is this person's speciality, is he a physicist?

[PC2]

That's an assumption born out of how we (or rather, you) think, though. And even then, they'd have tech that'll allow them to get 100% efficient energy from their local star. Why would they need to colonise everything to survive?

What I meant is that any advanced lifeform, alien or human, will want to convert the entire reachable universe into useful resources in order to survive. So for example let's say that based on our current knowledge of physics we can only imagine resisting any negative effects of entropy for a theoretical maximum of 10^80 years. In order to keep pushing that number indefinitely into the future any lifeforms in the universe will want to re-configure all of the reachable matter towards that purpose. While an advanced civilization can achieve a lot with the resources of 1 solar system they can achieve a lot more with the resources of a billion billion solar systems.

Of course an advanced lifeform may not desire to live forever but I think that's a lame choice because life is pretty fun.

[Themius]

The military pilot? It says it in the article: “from the infrared camera on the left wing of his F/A-18 Super Hornet, he’s become a flight instructor, a civilian employee in the aerospace industry […]”

Do you have to be a physicist to know that a human body would be crushed with G-forces it could not withstand?

To fully understand physics .. . yes... to say "it can't move like that" yes... to assume it is a craft with human and perhaps not a light... a background in climate may help.

[PC2]

“nothing can change my mind”, is an intellectually deficient approach.

That's a good point but even if everyone accepted this as valid evidence of aliens I don't see how it would change anything. I guess we could invest money into an alien detection or outreach program but people would get pissed off if it didn't lead to anything fruitful.

[Fargus]

What I meant is that any advanced lifeform, alien or human, will want to convert the entire reachable universe into useful resources in order to survive. So for example let's say that based on our current knowledge of physics we can only imagine resisting any negative effects of entropy for a theoretical maximum of 10^80 years. In order to keep pushing that number indefinitely into the future any lifeforms in the universe will want to re-configure all of the reachable matter towards that purpose. While an advanced civilization can achieve a lot with the resources of 1 solar system they can achieve a lot more with the resources of a billion billion solar systems.

Of course an advanced lifeform may not desire to live forever but I think that's a lame choice because life is pretty fun.

You don't need to do that to survive. You're also basing this on our current knowledge of physics, which is just foolish. You don't know if these civilizations will have access to alternate/higher dimensions to draw power, or something involving quantum mechanics.

[Forogil]

That's not really how relativity works. The flow of time works in one direction, and if we are the first and only life in the observable universe, something that is beyond that border cannot pop into it anymore.

Time flows in one direction, but relativity merged space and time - so that we have a light cone for the past (for things that came before us) and one for the future (for things that are after us) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_cone (obviously more complicated in general relativity).

Thus life is likely to develop elsewhere, neither in our past nor in our future - and neither of us can really say that we are first, because we cannot observe each other simultaneously.

And the "observable universe" isn't fixed, it's currently seems to be increasing, so that we for some time in the future can observe galaxies that currently are outside of our current observable universe, but in the future it's more complicated - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe

[PC2]

You don't need to do that to survive. You're also basing this on our current knowledge of physics, which is just foolish. You don't know if these civilizations will have access to alternate/higher dimensions to draw power, or something involving quantum mechanics.

Sure an advanced civilization could make a new discovery that allows for unlimited progress without a need for outward expansion and colonizing the universe. We can't rule that out but we shouldn't automatically assume that will be the case either.

[Ghostpanther]

During WW2, the Allies before the invasion of Normandy, placed a lot of fake blown up military vehicles close to the beach to deceive the Germans they planned on invading at a different spot.

The one lesson from it is, to protect a secret, come up with something which is fake, in order to keep it secret.

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Parts of the government are quite good at keeping things secret. Even if you brush alien stuff aside, the US military has routinely developed advanced aircraft (and many other things) while keeping them secret for decades. Of course, most government agencies and employees had no clue. Even those working on those projects may have only known a few pieces of the puzzle. No theorizing necessary with this kind of stuff since it's a matter of record at this point.

The current ineptitude of Trump and republicans is a good point, though. Obviously if you had some of these idiots running secret programs they probably wouldn't be secret anymore. It's already been suspected that US presidents and most of congress have been kept in the dark for several decades. This is even more likely now. I imagine there's quite a lot no one has told Trump.

Based on the declassified videos, there's really only a few options. Either another country or private entity has managed to advance several hundred (if not thousands) of years ahead of everyone else or we're being visited by aliens/time travelers/dimension hoppers.

To me, other countries/private entities getting ahead of everyone by such an enormous degree is less likely than aliens.

Lol! Everything is Trump's fault! Even aliens coming to the Earth.

Actually, Trump's son, asked him once if there was anything about the rumor of a saucer crashing in New Mexico in 1947 and Trump answered, " It is a interesting event, but that is all I can say about it ". All Presidents have security briefings and they are told a lot more than the public knows they are.

[Easo]

Now that you mentioned it I just searched for fastest air speed and got this as a result.

https://www.nasa.gov/missions/research/x43-main.html

I mean, those are unmanned and basically flying in a straight line. Same goes for HTV-2, which achieved 13k mph. Unmanned, of course. Does that mean we have aircraft that can do sudden drops in speed and altitude, then regain it right away? Nah.

[Orange Joe]

I mean, those are unmanned and basically flying in a straight line. Same goes for HTV-2, which achieved 13k mph. Unmanned, of course. Does that mean we have aircraft that can do sudden drops in speed and altitude, then regain it right away? Nah.

I wasn't saying they were manned. I was just explaining how I got the number I did.

Can you show me where the person I replied to mentions anything other than traveling at the speed of sound?