According to this Youtube site, Edward Snowden says we are being "controlled by aliens."

[Archae]

Anyone know if Snowden actually DID claim this?

Or is this just the usual flying saucer bullshit?

[m night shanahan]

1. Relax, it's Pure Bunk

The video was posted by Nemesis Maturity, a kook channel.

[cpwm17]

2. I haven't listened to the podcast with Neil deGrasse Tyson, but that's probably not quite accurate:

Edward Snowden says aliens could be sending us messages - but we may never detect them because they're encrypted

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3243139/Edward-Snowden-says-aliens-sending-messages-never-detect-encrypted.html

Many of us believe in aliens and that they may be trying to communicate across the universe.

But what if we are unable to decode their messages?

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden told Neil deGrasse Tyson he thinks aliens encrypt their communications and we don’t have the ability to detect or decode them. ‘You can't distinguish a properly encrypted communication from random behaviour.

https://soundcloud.com/startalk/a-conversation-with-edward-snowden-part-1

[Spitfire of ATJ]

3. Aliens wouldn't transmit with radio waves anyway....

Takes too long to send a message and get an answer.

[longship]

5. Huh? Which way is faster?

That is why we search with radio waves. There is no faster way! You know, that light speed problem solved by Einstein in 1905.

By the way, Orson Welles' Halloween broadcast of the War of the Worlds can be heard some 75 light years away from the Earth, if one had sensitive enough equipment. But that's as fast as communications can happen. Plus, that seems to be built into the fabric of the universe.

James Clerk Maxwell knew about this in the 19th century.


(Note: 'c' is the speed of light.)

[Spitfire of ATJ]

6. It's a given that interstellar travel requires breaking the time barrier.

[longship]

7. Huh?

Well, there's special relativity. As one travels faster relative to another point of reference, ones clock does indeed slow down. But it depends on the point of reference, as Einstein's equations accurately state.

But if one is traveling relatively slowly relative to another reference point, time just plods along at its normal speed (which, BTW, is the speed of light -- funny that).

Time dilation happens when one approaches the speed of light as the Lorentz transformation shows:

[Spitfire of ATJ]

8. What is speed but distance over time?

If you go backwards in time as you go forward in space than you arrive earlier.

[longship]

9. What makes one think that backwards in time is possible?

That's a SciFi wet dream, which is merely a plot device to get one to the next scene in the film, or book.

The equations do not support backward time travel. In fact, they specifically exclude it. One suspects that the arrow of time has something to do with entropy.

So here's another equation for people. Boltzmann's equation on entropy. It's engraved on his tombstone.

S = k log W

Physics 101, my good friend.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

10. Do you really believe there wont be FTL travel 5000 years from now?

[longship]

12. Yup! I do indeed believe that.

FTL travel is a Star Trek wet dream. Again, a mechanism to get the plot to the next scene, after the commercial.

I'd cite another equation, but there are no equations that show that travel back in time is not possible... other than the absence of equations that it is possible.

Furthermore, if one is going to posit travel back in time, one has to address causality. The old what happens if I go back in time and kill my grandfather? paradox. Plus, then there's the we don't see time travelers from the future walking around argument.

Sadly, for SciFi writers, time travel to the past is just not possible. And it is up to those who claim it is to put up, or shut up.

Regardless, it does make for interesting SciFi scenarios. Some of the best Star Trek episodes included travel to the past. (Except for J J Abrams abominations.) So I would not malign travel to the past as a SciFi plot device, except to point out that it is merely a plot device, albeit a sometimes good one, and sometimes a bad one (JJ, I am looking at you.)

My best to you.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

14. Just keep in mind the number of predictions made by science that were wrong....

19th century scientists claimed all of the passengers on a train would suffocate if it went 60 mph because all of the air would be sucked out of the cars.

[longship]

15. Utter rubbish.

That is the type of argument used by woo-woo advocates everywhere. It is an attempt to divert the argument, not advance it. It's called poisoning the well, a form of ad hominem attack.

Science is accountable to nature, nothing else. And science is not perfect; scientists make mistakes. That is why authority in science is not vested in a person, but in nature herself. She is the final arbiter of truth (personifying the universe as a female, a literary allusion).

But science is also very conservative. Scientists do not wholesale throw out entire theories just because they do not work exactly right. For instance, although Einstein's theory of general relativity supplanted Isaac Newton's gravitational theory in 1915, Newton's gravitational dynamics works perfectly well enough to land folks on the Moon and to get robotic probes to the farthest reaches of our solar system. But Newtonian gravitation is not good enough to predict Mercury's orbit, or to build an accurate and useful GPS satellite system. For those things, one needs Einstein. But Newton was in the driver's seat when Neil and Buzz landed on the Moon, not Einstein.

About authority in science... Here's Einstein about that:

[Spitfire of ATJ]

17. Yes. The irony is he is now adopted as an authority figure.

[longship]

19. I think he adequately addressed that precise point.

As I posted, and explained.

BTW, I enjoy this kind of back and forth.

My regards, in spite of our disagreements, which I attempt to do, respectfully. However, I am a rather fierce science advocate. It's the best that we have. And as Carl Sagan said, "Science delivers the goods." (Nota bene: he was not talking about products, but principles.)

[Spitfire of ATJ]

20. I really believe there will come a time when it's discovered life is plentiful in the universe....

Keeping in mind the way the earth spent billions of years prior to the Cambrian Explosion we may find a lot of world like that out there that are primordial soup.

Some may contain creatures that make dinosaurs look like teddy bears.

[longship]

21. I can embrace that.

But to be clear here, the discovery of extraterrestrial life will be made by science, not by hippies seeing lights in the sky in Santa Fe, NM, or ranchers with disemboweled cows in TX.

It is science which will provide and vet the evidence.

I hope to see that happen. But it will not likely be aliens landing. The galaxy is just too fucking big, and interstellar travel is a huge clusterfuck. Plus, there is likely no tech or science advances that will change either of those facts. That much we know.

As always.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

26. Frankly, I think we're in the boondocks.

[longship]

29. That is a good argument, too.

And BTW, we are in the boondocks of the galaxy, which may explain why space aliens never fucked my great grandmother... or used something like an anal probe on her. (What is it with the anal probing? I think humans are just fucking sick in the head.)

[Spitfire of ATJ]

32. We came up with religion and stuck with it out of tradition.

[longship]

38. I can embrace tradition.

But as a lifelong atheist, I have a problem with religion. I often give the religious a pass, however. As many say, religion may be inherent in our makeup. That won't stop me from maligning religion in general, or specific religions. Don't get me started about the evil cult, Scientology.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

39. At least religion gave us flying buttresses.

[longship]

40. I love gothic cathedrals.

My fave is St John the Divine in NYC, across Morningside Park from Harlem. One could put the entirety of Riverside cathedral within the nave of St. John's. It is huge.

When I lived in NYC for a brief period, I would drop into St. John's on Sunday afternoon when the organist would practice in situ, kicking the dust out of the pipes, as it were. Bach, Cesar Frank, and all sorts of glorious music would emit from the many ranks of organ pipes. And plein jeu was the order of the day. It is an amazing experience; to sit alone in that huge cathedral listening to the echoes of wonderful music fade after seconds of reverberation. It is something one does not soon forget. Indeed, the last time I did this was the 1970's and it sticks with me to this day.

It is like Philip Larkin's poem Church Going, which is a favorite of mine. Larkin, an atheist like me, visits an old church in the country and considers that there is something to this thing called religion. Sitting alone on Sunday afternoon listening to the organist practice gave me the same feeling. So I think.

Here: http://www.artofeurope.com/larkin/lar5.htm

And here it is, read by the poet:

[Spitfire of ATJ]

41. Many of the rituals and ceremonies of old were folded into the Christian religion....

The temples of Apollo, Zeus, Aphrodite, etc. were places of worship, payer, singing and ritual. They also had altars and priest and relics and sacraments. They performed weddings and funerals and offered counseling as well as accepted offerings and helped the poor and gave sermons.

We're starting to get to the point as a species to grow beyond it though.

Think about it, the Church used to have the power to appoint Kings.

[longship]

42. Well, now you are twisting me around.

Which is always a good thing. One can only adhere to something if it is challenged.

I hope you click through to the Larkin poem.

Thank you very much for this dialog, a most enlightening one.

My best.

[gregcrawford]

24. Well, now ya know...

... NEVER debate science with ol' Longship! He is a gentleman and a scholar, and generous with his knowledge, but he will shred a specious argument!

[Spitfire of ATJ]

27. That's okay, I'm just visiting this planet.

[gregcrawford]

33. Me, too!

[longship]

30. Thank you, my good friend.

But you should know that I also call these folks here my good friends as well.

But I much appreciate, and am humbled by your comment.


However you are still a lousy cartoonist.


Just kidding, my friend.


My best to you all.

[Cheviteau]

23. Let me just say.

having read both of your long comments, it seems that you are of the mind that the laws of physics (as mankind knows them) apply in every corner of the universe. Moreover, you seem to think that 'we' are the smartest ones on the block. And that the laws of physics discovered and those yet to be discovered will come from 'us'. That's pretty shallow thinking for someone who seems to know a little about the subject. I haven't a clue about time travel or intergalactic travel. However, I'm old enough at 76 to know that mankind (we) has severe limitations.

[longship]

25. Well, the physical laws DO seem to apply everywhere in the universe.

Meaning that there has not been a single example where they do not.

And nobody is saying that the physics comes from 'us'. Quite the contrary. If people had bothered to read my post, they would have understood my words to state clearly that nature is the final arbiter, not people. (Some people are so threatened by such a concept that they make shit up to get some anti-science point of view across. E.G., it does not work.)

And indeed, humans are fallible. Thankfully, the scientific method is self-correcting. And always, nature sets the standard. That's why science works so fucking well and why anomalies are so interesting. They open the door to new discoveries. Yet, we've come far. As Newton said, he stood on the shoulders of giants.

That is the best expression of why science works. And the best exemplar of this is that no matter where we look, or how deeply we look into the universe, what we know here is also true there. It is really kind of amazing that nature really is one whole everywhere and everywhen. That is one thing, above all, that science says very strongly. And there is no falsification of those principles. None whatsoever.

Regardless, there are still many unanswered questions. But it will be science that answers them, not some made-up shit on the Internet. The difference is not the answer, but the method one uses to find the answer. Science is very, very good at the method thingie. It has had lots of practice, which is why it works so well.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

28. "Science is very, very good at the method thingie. It has had lots of practice."

That's why so many discoveries are made by accident.

[longship]

35. Well, indeed, serendipity plays a role.

When one is curious, one tends to do lots of things. Lots of things!

As a good example of what you say, answer this: Does Alexander Fleming discover the antibiotic nature of the penicillin mold if he wasn't an utter pig who never cleaned or straightened his laboratory? Somehow, I doubt it, which supports your argument.

Penzias and Wilson discovering the cosmic background radiation was accidental, too. Both won a Nobel for it.

Yet there are people like Jonas Salk who see a goal and move towards it deliberately. Thus, we have the polio vaccine, which in my youth was killing or maiming millions.

Or, Rosalind Franklin who first imaged the structure of DNA using x-rays. She knew what she was doing, and if she had not died might have been awarded a Nobel Prize for a single damned photograph.

But, yes, some are accidents. But they are relatively rare. Most scientists work towards a specific goal, not often wholly achieved. Each adds to our knowledge.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

37. Forget, "Eureka!". It's more like, "That's funny,..."....

Like the candy bar melting in the pocket which gave us the microwave oven.

I will say it's unlikely someone working in a garage with stumble upon anti-gravity.

[arcane1]

16. That doesn't mean *everything* is possible n/t

[Spitfire of ATJ]

18. True, I don't expect Cheney to go to jail.

[wildbilln864]

22. we will be extinct long, long before then so...

what will be doing the traveling?

[Spitfire of ATJ]

31. 5000 years is a blip in evolution so humans will still be here....

The problem with thinking the human race will end is you don't plan ahead.

[wildbilln864]

34. 200 years max.

but I hope you're right.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

36. Think about it, we think of all of the ways the world could come to end....

It never occurs to us that it wont.

[wildbilln864]

44. yes it occurs to some but

I wasn't talking about the world coming to an end. just humanity becoming extinct. the world will continue.

[BeanMusical]

4. Just a lame attempt to smear him.

[uhnope]

11. What he actually said was that alien transmissions must be encrypted, natch. He's obsessed

Looks like life in the Russian dictatorship is getting to him.
http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/21/9363863/edward-snowden-alien-encryption

"When we think about everything we're hearing from our satellites, or everything they're hearing from our civilization, if there are indeed aliens out there, all of their communications are encrypted by default. So what we're hearing — which is actually an alien television show or a phone call or a message between their planet and their own GPS constellation, whatever it happens to be — is indistinguishable to us from cosmic microwave background radiation."

http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/21/9363863/edward-snowden-alien-encryption

[longship]

13. Here's the source.

Interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson on his weekly Star Talk program.

http://www.startalkradio.net/show/a-conversation-with-edward-snowden-part-1/

And don't pay any attention to any other source until you get the primary one. That's the way science works, as Neil might say.

My best to you all.

[longship]

43. This video is absolute rubbish.

The only reason why I did not alert on it for being abject conspiracy theory is its entertainment value.