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Have we already been visited by aliens?

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Re: Have we already been visited by aliens?

#131
post #96
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very common in science. New theories are usually rejected and ridiculed until/if they develop enough evidence behind them to sway people. Some careers are destroyed. Some scientists are only vindicated posthumously. The process can take many decades. Scientists, like most humans, are not that open-minded and are subject to the same group-think blind spots. I think if we could get better at being open-minded a…

The most recent event that comes to my mind is the lead up to the discovery of H. pylori causing gastric ulcers.

Append Ignaz Semmelweis to this important list, which is a plump one.

Re: Have we already been visited by aliens?

#132

I just started to watch the 1993 series Star Trek new generation. The show has some interesting ideas regarding advanced civilizations vs the primitive ones. One of which is called the prime directive prohibiting any star fleet from intervening with the evolution of primitive people. In one of the episodes “who watches the watcher” the USS enterprise travels to planet Minkita 2 for a rescue mission and encounters a p…

Don't people in Star Trek have our culture? But our culture is that of a primitive civilization, which means they are primitive too.

Star Trek definition of primitive is "no warp drive tech".

Re: Have we already been visited by aliens?

#133
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ridiculing scientists for plausible hypothesis seems very unscientific.

This is very common in science. New theories are usually rejected and ridiculed until/if they develop enough evidence behind them to sway people. Some careers are destroyed. Some scientists are only vindicated posthumously. The process can take many decades. Scientists, like most humans, are not that open-minded and are subject to the same group-think blind spots. I think if we could get better at being open-minded a…

Bretz defended his theories, and this kicked off an acrimonious 40-year debate over the origin of the Scablands. Both Pardee and Bretz continued their research over the next 30 years, collecting and analyzing evidence that led them to identify Lake Missoula as the source of the Spokane flood and creator of the channeled scablands.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missoula_floods

Also Plate Tectonics...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_development_of...

Re: Have we already been visited by aliens?

#134

Prof David Kipping did a point-by-point analysis of Loeb's claims: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qX_Bj7064Ms TLDW: most likely a natural object.

Thanks for the link. Always good to hear the other side, especially after listening to the Lex interview a while back. Here's the summary:

Loeb's argument for Ouamuamua being aliens rests on 6 observed anomalies. All but 1 or 2 have pretty reasonable rebuttals.

[1]: Anomaly: There are too few interstellar asteroids to expect something like this, so it must have been aimed at us. The brand new telescope that discovered this was designed to look for interstellar rocks like this, but the fact that it discovered one so quickly is absurdly lucky.

Rebuttal: Most models for interstellar rocks could be wrong. There are some models for interstellar rock ejection however that would put this observation right in the zone of reasonable probability.

[2]: Anomaly: Ouamuamua is flying in a vector called the Local Standard of Rest (LSR) -- it's not "flying" through space, but rather looks like a stationary beacon or 'buoy' (aliens speculation: comms or navigation station). The LSR is basically average orbit around the galactic core -- all local stars are bouncing in all directions, but if you zoom out, on average, everyone's orbiting the galactic core. This average is the LSR, and it's weird that Ouamuamua is right in the LSR range.

Rebuttal: LSR is exactly what you would expect for an interstellar asteroid. Interstellar asteroids are formed early in solar system development, when gas clouds are still condensing into stars and planets. Those gas clouds are traveling around the galaxy in the LSR range, so anything ejected during that time should be in the LSR range.

[3]: Anomaly: Ouamuamua had an unusual orbit and flew close to Earth, so it must have been aimed at us.

Rebuttal: Observational bias. Had it not passed so close to us, we wouldn't have seen it. Given that within only a few weeks it all but disappeared from detection capabilities while still well within the solar system, it could be there's lots of other objects like this currently in the solar system that we just haven't detected yet.

[4]: Anomaly: Ouamuamua is too reflective to be a comet or asteroid.

Rebuttal: Straight up disagreement. Other scientists to point to comets and asteroids that could have that level of reflectivity.

The last two arguments are the interesting ones where the rebuttals are a bit weak.

[5]: Anomaly: Shape is too strange to be natural, but could be a thin solar sail, tumbling perhaps due to being derelict. It was too small to resolve with any telescopes, but by curve-fitting brightness shifts, models suggest it's either cigar-shaped (popular depiction) or pancake-shaped (the solar sail hypothesis).

Rebuttal: It does have an anomalous 6:1 brightness shift every 8 hours, but a tumbling solar sail should have an even higher contrast ratio. If it was a solar sail, it would have to be gently wobbling, not completely tumbling. This is actually what we'd expect from a solar sail (keep it more or less pointed at the sun), but if that was true, we would have expected the brightness fluctuations to even out as it got further from the sun (angles and geometry). This was not observed, so it probably kept tumbling, therefore not solar sail.

[6]: Anomaly: It exhibited acceleration that couldn't be explained by gravitational forces. Comets have this acceleration because a comet's tail is outgassing of the ices that make up the comet, acting as a rudimentary thruster. But Ouamuamua didn't have any observed tail, therefore, solar sail.

Rebuttal: Basically some kind of new comet chemistry that would have prevented us from observing the comet tail. Some gasses would have been hard to observe, or the outgassing was lagged so it started after we would have been able to observe it. Basically, "we haven't seen this before, but there are hypothetical ways to explain this." Science, and astronomy specifically, is filled with those kinds of "we haven't seen this before" discoveries.

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This is my summary of the youtube video, which is a summary of a few papers... to go deeper, should probably read the primary sources. I'm also just a youtube watcher, not an astronomer.

In the Lex podcast, Loeb kept quoting Sherlock Homes: "If you exclude all other possibilities, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." My take is all of these rebuttals do seem to include other more prosaic possibilities, so Loeb hasn't really excluded all the other possibilities that warrant the jump to the improbable.

Re: Have we already been visited by aliens?

#135

I just started to watch the 1993 series Star Trek new generation. The show has some interesting ideas regarding advanced civilizations vs the primitive ones. One of which is called the prime directive prohibiting any star fleet from intervening with the evolution of primitive people. In one of the episodes “who watches the watcher” the USS enterprise travels to planet Minkita 2 for a rescue mission and encounters a p…

I can’t say I’ve ever seen a post on the internet go ahead and explain what the prime directive is before.

Yes, having the prime directive explained on the internet almost seems 'alien'

Re: Have we already been visited by aliens?

#136
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There seems to be a giant mismatch about what side is open minded. People who think its most likely aliens think it’s closed minded to assign that low probability, presumably because we’re this tiny corner of the universe. People who think it’s most likely not aliens Think it’s closed minded to assign everything else low probability, presumably because aliens are a tiny corner of everything else. Is it a misapplicati…

I thought the idea that there are gazillions of advanced aliens has been pretty much disproven by the fermi paradox. If there are gazillion, at least one out of all the diversity out there should have already colonized the entire galaxy and evidence should be plentiful.

Maybe there has been some sort of accident of scale, like the intergalactic fleet in Hitch Hiker Guide to the Galaxy that arrives to destroy Earth but is eaten by a dog.

There could be a banging ET party going at the Planck scale and we would never know, they might as well be on the other side of the universe.

Re: Have we already been visited by aliens?

#138

I just started to watch the 1993 series Star Trek new generation. The show has some interesting ideas regarding advanced civilizations vs the primitive ones. One of which is called the prime directive prohibiting any star fleet from intervening with the evolution of primitive people. In one of the episodes “who watches the watcher” the USS enterprise travels to planet Minkita 2 for a rescue mission and encounters a p…

What's the spoiler-filled version of what happened?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Watches_the_Watchers#Plot

Re: Have we already been visited by aliens?

#139
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most recent event that comes to my mind is the lead up to the discovery of H. pylori causing gastric ulcers.

Tectonic plates was another big one.

Peoples position on that one shifted very slowly.

Re: Have we already been visited by aliens?

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution to distance isn’t energy; it’s time. Even at speeds much lower than the speed of light, a civilization could have spread across or explored the Milky Way in a few millions of years. These needn’t have been biological creatures. Von Neumann probes, “Genesis” machines, or just flinging rocks with sensors on them to tour the stars would do the trick.

What would motivate a civilization to undertake such an experiment? A probe a 50,000 light years away would take 50,000 years to send back any meaningful information. Unless alien life-spans are significantly longer than humans, I would think this would probably not be funded by their science department.

They spent 50000 years exploring space, we spent 50000 years waging wars. Who spent their time better?
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