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Former intel officer says 'non-human biologics’ found at alleged UFO crash sites

bbc.co.uk

551–560 of 673 posts

Re: Former intel officer says 'non-human biologics’ found at alleged UFO crash sites

#551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about the option that aliens exist but are not here nor are detectable yet because we are the first and most technologically advanced form of life to arise…yet.

if other life exists, the chances of us being first would be really low given the size and age of the universe

No doubt, but its not zero.

The Fermi paradox assumes intelligent life is common. However, perhaps its not. It certainly was not rare on the one planet we know for sure life exists. Biodiversity on earth right now nears 9 million forms, with probably at least that many now extinct. So out of all of those forms of life there is one that evolved the intelligence necessary to detect life outside of this planet.

So even with the age and size of the universe…and knowing the conditions necessary for life to evolve being somewhat rare, and the conditions necessary for intelligent life to evolve where life is being also some rare given our experience here on earth, it is not a huge leap to say that while life might be common in the universe, intelligent life could be uncommon, and if it is uncommon, we could be early enough to be one of few intelligent species out there. So we may not be detecting anybody because there is nobody out there to detect…just yet. Especially given distance and time and the fact that evidence we are capable of detecting is coming to us from an intelligent species may still be quite a time away since we are seeing their past.

Re: Former intel officer says 'non-human biologics’ found at alleged UFO crash sites

#552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we don’t see aliens because they don’t exist, or we don’t see them because they are here already imo most likely is they exist, but space is just so unimaginable huge, and also Aliens can at most go close to lightspeed. They didn't beat physics nor invented portals / wormholes? > They should be here already. Least likely for me out of the three options.. just our tinfoil hat love :)

> and also Aliens can at most go close to lightspeed. You're an expert in alien technology and civilizations far more technologically advanced than we are?

Not being able to move faster than c is a pretty hard limit on everything in the universe. Unless our model of physics, the same one that predicted gravitational waves, black holes, time dilation, gravitational lending, etc. correctly is so fundamentally wrong that FTL travel is possible without things that probably don’t exist like negative mass aliens would need to spend at least decades to get to and from Earth. Frankly we’re not that important.

Re: Former intel officer says 'non-human biologics’ found at alleged UFO crash sites

#553
post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean there is one thing we can safely assume: their vehicles have to operate in the same universe as ours, at least when they are meant to be in ours at some point. Now they might know some tricks around the limitations of our universes physics, but even those tricks must do something measurably.

They have to abide by the rules of the universe that WE know of. The universe is unbelievably big but also unfathomably OLD, so I'm sure there's been plenty of time for a number of civilizations to reach a technological level vastly larger than ours. Our latest technological revolution started just a hundred years ago. Imagine what just 10,000 more years can do. I mean, we thought (and our math said so) that the spee…

Not necessarily, from what I heard humanity being alone is actually an extremely plausible solution to the Fermi paradox because we exist close to the beginning of the total lifespan of the universe.

Re: Former intel officer says 'non-human biologics’ found at alleged UFO crash sites

#554
Here we are, having the same arguments about this we did in 1950 or so. After decades and decades of the exact same story over and over and over, maybe it's time we started thinking about this differently. "UFOs are fake and everyone who says they saw one is a liar or crazy" is tiresome, you'd have to be a liar or crazy (or woefully uninformed) yourself to actually believe that without at least major doubt. "UFOs exist and I have personally seen their ship fly with my own eyes" and "I have personally seen alien bodies" also doesn't ring true. My conclusion is much stranger: There are UFOs, and they somehow defy our ability to capture them. Maybe they don't follow the laws of physics, and we can't actually contain them.

Re: Former intel officer says 'non-human biologics’ found at alleged UFO crash sites

#555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time travel backwards is causality breaking, which is a far, far more important physical principle than relativity. Time travel forwards is quite simple though, but less exciting.

we can't rule out time travel forward on Earth. There is geological evidence of civilization destroying events 12k years ago, possibly more. I've often thought about why it took 300-400k years to go from fire to agricultural-civilization, then tech takes off in under 5k years from that point. What if the time from fire to civilization was faster, but those civilizations were wiped out (by geological, astrological or…

From what I’ve heard it’s completely plausible for pre industrial human civilizations to have existed and been wiped out in the past but anything past that point would leave things like heavy metals we could detect in the geological record.

Re: Former intel officer says 'non-human biologics’ found at alleged UFO crash sites

#556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about the option that aliens exist but are not here nor are detectable yet because we are the first and most technologically advanced form of life to arise…yet.

if other life exists, the chances of us being first would be really low given the size and age of the universe

The universe is huge, if intelligent life exists outside the local group we have basically 0 way of being able to contact it, let alone visit it.

Re: Former intel officer says 'non-human biologics’ found at alleged UFO crash sites

#557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. Not military, but have significantly researched the U.S. secret keeping system because I’ve long been enthralled by espionage. As I understand it, any classified document can be SCI, secure compartmentalize information(I think this is used for spy stuff, barely anyone needs to be able to link a spy’s real ID to their assumed ID, the less people who know the better), or be part of an SAP, Special Access Program(w…

Right, but somebody has to maintain those IT systems, and if the government is anything like other huge, data-hoarding corporations, then they deploy sysadmins who have an incredible amount of access because they have to in order to maintain the system. IT systems do not run themselves.

With modern encryption, sysadmins should not have access to the data on the systems they maintain.

Re: Former intel officer says 'non-human biologics’ found at alleged UFO crash sites

#558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time travel backwards is causality breaking, which is a far, far more important physical principle than relativity. Time travel forwards is quite simple though, but less exciting.

we can't rule out time travel forward on Earth. There is geological evidence of civilization destroying events 12k years ago, possibly more. I've often thought about why it took 300-400k years to go from fire to agricultural-civilization, then tech takes off in under 5k years from that point. What if the time from fire to civilization was faster, but those civilizations were wiped out (by geological, astrological or…

Technology begets itself. As you're less pressured by environmental limitations, you have more time to advance instead of just survive, which brings even more time to advance further faster, etc. Additionally language is a pretty huge factor for spreading knowledge, written language another huge factor, mass printing again, remote communication yet again, and mass digital communication yet again on top. It makes sense that each next leap in our past came faster than the previous.

Re: Former intel officer says 'non-human biologics’ found at alleged UFO crash sites

#559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would aliens have to destroy? When I go out for a hike in the woods or a hike in a new state/country that isn’t my home. I don’t go out destroying the land around me. I observe and enjoy my time Maybe these aliens are scientists. Documenting biological life across the galaxy. Maybe they’re VanCampers. Just bouncing from planet to planet for fun If a civilization has presumably reached FTL travel. I imagine many o…

And that's fine and all, but it's been nearly a hundred years and they're still doing the same shit? Are we supposed to believe we are the equivalent of a tourist attraction? One where you seem to have a high likelihood of dying?

Not saying I believe this, but for sake of argument…

If these are scientific/observation missions, humanity is going through its most transformative stages of advancement, and the last 100 years have been quite interesting.

If we could go and observe a developing civilization secretly and over a long period of time, I suspect we would.

Re: Former intel officer says 'non-human biologics’ found at alleged UFO crash sites

#560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would aliens have to destroy? When I go out for a hike in the woods or a hike in a new state/country that isn’t my home. I don’t go out destroying the land around me. I observe and enjoy my time Maybe these aliens are scientists. Documenting biological life across the galaxy. Maybe they’re VanCampers. Just bouncing from planet to planet for fun If a civilization has presumably reached FTL travel. I imagine many o…

> Maybe these aliens are scientists. Their opsec's way too good for scientists. If they're anything like our scientists, we'd have recovered one of the flying saucers when they tried to go through Arby's drive-through but didn't have enough clearance. Maybe they're just fictional, and this guy has a Fox Mulder larping fetish. > If a civilization has presumably reached FTL travel. I imagine many of their needs have be…

> Their opsec's way too good for scientists.

I think it’s a mistake to imagine how an alien species would behave based on our own tendencies.

A civilization that has achieved what their (supposed) presence here implies has clearly managed to move far beyond human capability, and our understanding of opsec seems irrelevant.

It could be that with sufficiently advanced technology, “opsec” is mostly irrelevant relative to a species like ours with the capabilities we have.

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