How close are the mother ships?

[beemaster]

We use to have (still do I know) the dooms day clock, but I have always had this Star Trek kinda scenario that when the world became at peace (and I think we'll ever see see is to "Agree to Disagree" but general piece on Earth, then the Mother Ship come to Earth, welcoming us to the Intergalactic collective of
Intelligent Planets.

I like to think of the mother ship, like the dooms day clocl, the ship moves clser and further from Earth as we deal with all the stuff on our burners right now.

The whole work seems to want some version of democracy - that is still a lot of countries to have to change. No conting the little crap countries that don't matter even if slaughter is going on there, 20 times the number of Lybia.

Do you think there is the least chance EARTH will ever qualify for the Interplantary council?

Image, if an advanced civilization showed us a means of perpulsion through the stars, it will be so advanced, our engineers will view it as magic. I want the Vulcans to come down and meet us in like James Cromwell in that very good Star Trek movie.

[wayne]

Then let's try the shoe on the other foot shall we?

Let's say that we have managed to travel across space and found a planet with an intelligent species of almost equal technology to us. A planet divided into nation states, each with a different language and culture. Some at war internally and some with each other.
What do we do? Do we make contact and hope they draw together? Do we turn away and leave them to their devices?
Is there a way to make contact that will stabilize the planet? Or destroy it?
If we had made contact on fairly equal terms would the act have been begnine?
Met in open space for example just two ships passing a point. How would we meet and establish contact and how would we act if it turned out the ship belonged to a less than peaceful nation state rather than a united planet?
And if they were united but kept slaves, or fought gladiators, or liked to kick kittens for example, should we make contact? If not why?
There is more that must be considered than our opinion of readiness. We have no idea of what they may look for in a trading partner.
I read a book long ago that had an alien race contacting Earth, but to be let into this galactic community man had to have something to offer. Man and the ETs looked at Earth and its history and found that man was really good at only two things.
We were very good at fighting. We excelled at war. But, and that was our saving grace, we had also learned to heal our wounded. We excelled at medicine.
And on that we were allowed to travel in space, as healers.
Perhaps we just have nothing to offer anyone. 
 
 

[BlueBee]

This is a lot to chew on.  Alien life, Inter galactic propulsion, peace on Earth.  I’m not sure which is the least likely to ever exist!

For Aliens to get to Earth you have to first believe in Aliens.  The numbers of stars are so great, that if you base your belief on simply probability, then the odds of Aliens is likely.  Then you have to move onto the odds of the Aliens breaking Einstein’s theories of space/time to get here.  Einstein was a very smart man and the distances are extremely vast.

My perspective is intelligence doesn’t evolve from random chemical combinations, even over eons of time and trillions of stars.  If intelligence evolved from random interactions of the basic parts (ie. nucleotides) then why can’t something MUCH simpler like a Corvette evolve out of its basic elements?  Plastic, Aluminum and some iron?  If things evolve from randomness, why do we need Microsoft to make our computers work?  Why can’t our computers make their own operating system by just having them powered up? 

The other pail of water I would throw on the Aliens is the lack of any radio wave detection by SETI.  If there is intelligent life out there, they will be generating radio waves/electromagnetic waves for the same reasons we do.  Those waves travel at the speed of light.  If anybody is out there, or has ever been out there, we should have detected them via SETI.  We have not. 

I think we’ll be celebrating peace on Earth…..alone, if it ever happens!

[beemaster]

That's all good, but we both leave out one thing, a perception of the rareness of life, escpecially advanced - at least on its way to advanced.

I think life forms capable of traveling vast distances in machines that feel no G-Force, etc., hardly are looking for slaves, to bulky a cargo. DNA another thing, but if a society from elsewhere has traveled many times, they would have a better idea of how much qualifying life is in the Universe. They would know if it was precious or common. Until we know different, we assume probable but unproven.

Wouldn't it be amazing to have a Universal GPS and the technology to find and evaluated hundreds of civilizations and viable planets and it is all common place scientific data study to you.

I guess I'm an optimist in thinking we have potential in the BIG PICTURE - what ever that is. I always believed that Bible and other books of faith are God's user manual for man, I also wonder how many other user manuals God has handed out to the Universe.

But as always, at least in our life time: man will never find other life except in small, almost microbial form in our own Solar System. And every where else beyond the solar system is thousands of years of travel. Thanks to Obama, all the money used in research as to  the missions back to the moon and landing on Mars are dead - at best we will ORBIT Mars on 2033, which most of the world is studying Phobos (potato shaped moon 4X20 miles big that orbits Mars) most conspiracy people think "Phobos" is a Mars Made spaceship that has gathered space dust and debre for a million years or so and looks no more like a asteroid than a moon.

Photos taken from the European Space Unit (who have a Phobos Orbiter) say certain radio frequency photos show LEVELS and DECKS deep in the potato shaped moon. And Russia plans on landing on Phobos - no details on that sorry.

I think the Mother ship thing is a indicator, no more actual in scaling than the dooms day clock. I figure the Dooms Day Clock will be very accurate at the end of the world, up until all the details are in, it is like long range weather forecasting, very hit and miss.

[beemaster]

Einstein sure had a pretty good grasp of things, he hated string theory concepts and doubted their existance - but we now know we have quarks and endlessly small pieces.

But you mention radio waves, I'm a ham operator of nearly 40 years, and know a lot about waves, plus I believe that one "secret of the Universe" is everything cycles. Planets, heartbeats, everything cycles.

So seti has been doing it's thing and YES sending a CYCLE at the speed of light which in common sense terms is 186 thousand miles per second. Or in very precise terms a Light year is 66.9 million miles per hour. Transmitting signals on many wave bands. That is how fast RADIO, SETI, TV has  been sending their signals out, and to think to get to the nearest star is 4 years at 66.9 million miles per hour. And if someone, we'll say 40 light years out HEARD our signal from SETI and they too only had conventional travel as we do, it would take 40 years to return the message that they heard us.

SETI is too early for much of what is likely to hear it's signal. Then there is Infinite Blocking a term when if an object such as a planet, star, etc., will block the radio signal behind them in space (but the signal ) luckily everything moves, so what is blocked partially can maybe catch it ?IF" it is listening.

Just image cultures like our own and how helpless if we only have 80 years between the snail mail of light speed.

I'd bet though that somewhere in the Universe there are many STAR TRAVELER SHIPS out there, seeking, but EVERYTHING is so far away, they are searching needles for haystacks.

Lastly, Einstein says nothing can travel faster than the speed of light - wonder who has proven that wrong and just maybe MILLIONS of years ago. It is a vast and mysterious Universe.

[Humanbeeing]

I don't believe in aliens from other planets, though there probably are other life forms on other planets. Any "visitors" we may experience, are interdimensional. Dark Matter, the stuff we can't see, is just the rest of creation. It's all around us, and so are they.
It all depends at which vibration level you are vibrating at, or how you manipulate that energy. Right now, my energy level is so low, I don't even want to walk to the bathroom. If you want to prove it, as I have, just learn to Astrial Project. Once you do, you will understand the nature of our reality.

[BlueBee]

I don’t think the odds of even microbial life our solar system is likely.  My perspective (and the second law of Thermodynamics perspective) is that order does not naturally form from dis-order.  Functional DNA and cell walls and cell energy collecting mechanisms IS a form of order and requires intelligence to create.  Just like writing software that WORKS, intelligence is required to get all the base pairs ordered in a working fashion. 

The Universe is believed to be something around 15 billion years old.  If intelligence life existed shouldn’t the universe be FILLED with radio waves after 10 billion years to Aliens watching their TVs, talking on their phones, listening to MTV?  Humans seemed to be slow arriving on this Earth.  Blame the reptiles?  It took us nearly 5 billion years to come around.  Giving the Aliens the same slow 5 billion year time frame, that still leaves 10 billion years of radio chatter that should be out there?  SETI hears nothing.

I will concede that SETI probably can’t pick up radio waves outside this galaxy since radio waves attenuate at 1/r2.  So there might be a lot of chatter in some other galaxy that we’ll never know about.  Maybe the Aliens are all in Andromeda?

I’m actually am an optimist too, I hope you’re right….there’s just these nagging details. 

[AliciaH]

Or...You guys don't remember the Twilight Zone episode where the aliens came down and threatened us with extinction because we hadn't made enough progress?  Earth's leaders pulled together really quick and made instant peace?  The aliens laughed and said, "No, we wanted you to fight more!" 

Who knows what aliens would want just because they have the technology to get here?

[Brian D. Bray]

John,

Yes, Seti sends out signals on a wide range of frequency allotments but if you understand radio waves you recognize that by the time Earth origin radio waves exit out solar system they are pretty much regulated to the back ground hiss of the universe.  One needs either the proper equipment to seperate intelligent signals from the background noise (squelch) or be close enough to the origin of the signals to intercept them.   Just look at the distortion of EME transmissions.

Besides, a more advanced race might make contact with a rudimentary civilazation (as some recorded history seems to indicate happened on earth millinea ago) but it would ignore one advanced sufficiently to be dangerous while misinterperating an aliens intentions.  We currently fit in the latter state with our continuous wars and nuclear capabilities.

Brian  AE7LV

[beemaster]

As you know I've been a ham most my life, and I figure you were talking to the readers as well, but totally understand and agree.

The biggest flaw I see is this though:

Let's say we send a signal and 45,000 years later by some miracle it is intercepted. Although we send coordinates that should greatly assist  "Others" to find us, by time they receive the transmission, we have moved within the solar system, it has moved within the galaxy and it has moved within the Universe - in the big picture of how far everything has moved it could be billions of trillions of miles and EVERYTHING shuffled like a deck of cards made up of billions of cards.

We can say (and correctly so) that the Mayans have nailed the time it takes our solar system to orbit within out small and somewhat random looking galaxy, it is true a hundred billion stars is at best an average, even a little smaller than average galaxy, so nothing much about the Milky Way stands out.

But Mayans figured out that we orbit within the Milky Way every 25,000 years or so, and predict from a random start date that December 21, 2012 will be the date we return to that start point. It does go greater in that our positioning with the other galaxies and the known universe (which grows by billions of years every time Hubble gets a new pair of glasses) but our galaxy's alignment does have notable alignment with the Current center of the Universe. Of course, how do we know where the center is, if we don't know the Universe's boundaries, if indeed there are any.

Which brings me to my simple but EXACT solstice calendar I have mentioned before - on April 15th (tax day was as good a day to remember as any) I marked the time the sun cast a shadow on a seam on my living room wall's wallpaper - it is 7:31am. The time and date are of no relevance, only that you have a fixed spot to use as a time-line. It could have been any number of minutes earlier or later, or on any date, but the important part is that using a fixed spot allows you to await a year to go by and miraculously the sun is EXACTLY where it was the year before and to the minute. If literally was 4 inches short the day before and 4 inches beyond the day after the 15th at 7:31am, but on the 15th, I sat watching it crawl across my wall and like a Swiss Watch strike the seam exactly as it did a year earlier. Lastly, no other day of the year will it align at that time, there is no 6 month repeat of the event, it is a one shot a year thing.

Now... if I hadn't read the information needed to create my own solstice calendar, I would NEVER in my life time know how long a year was if it wasn't already known. I'm amazed at the people who figure out such things and how distant in the past (literally 10 thousand years ago or longer) and that really blows me away, considering how short a time ago it was that we still thought the world was flat, even though during eclipses we see Earth's shadow move across the moon and of course appear round, rightfully so. I know much of the flat Earth theory was "church" forced concepts and event though the moon appears round, doesn't mean it is a sphere, indeed for all we knew in more ancient times, it could have been flat as a coin.

Back on track though, we will NEVER be able to find anyone "out there" it is up to them to be capable of finding us. If at best all we can do is send radio signals across the spectrum, we are mere cave people feeding off the marrow of animals that other animals took down. We've only figured how to smash bones with rocks, and I doubt this over-populated planet stands a chance to ever survive long enough to go to the stars.

[wayne]

  My Father used to say we should just give the country back to the Indians and see if they could fix it. This was usually followed by one of his friends comment that they wouldn't take it after we messed it up that bad.
  I suspect that if ET were to visit, they might think the same thing. And turn us down if we offer them the place.
 

[don2]

You know there is someone else out there. Just too much space not to have another colony some where.
Once you get out of the Earth's Gravity think how far you can go on a tank of gas. But we shouldn't need gas out there, just grab a couple crystals now and then. :roll: :)don2

[BlueBee]

Maybe we want to hold up on calling those motherships? 

A new study says “a core concern is that Extraterrestrial Intelligence will learn of our presence and quickly travel to Earth to eat or enslave us”.

http://news.yahoo.com/scientists-warn-aliens-may-come-destroy-us-160003672.html

Do we have any new volunteers to run that SETI transmitter?  :-D

[T Beek]

  I always thought 'this' was the mother ship.

thomas

[Vance G]

Just remember the book entitled How to Serve Man, in the Twilight Zone was a COOKBOOK!   They are just as apt to be hungry as helpful.  We are not doing all that bad folks.