UFOs - I had a friend say that lots of people believe we got our start in

[patricia92243]

modern technology from a downed flying saucer. At the time I thought that this is the silliest thing I've heard lately.

I've thought about it since then, and now I'm not so sure that it is such a crazy thought. Mankind has advanced more in the last 100 years (or less) than they have since the beginning of time. Why?

Just interested in other people's thoughts on this? I've never even believed in UFO before, so for me to even mention this is a big deal.

[Dookus]

1. we have advanced so much

because of science, which is only a few hundred years old. It's a process that builds on previous successes and can lead to the kind of "enlightenment" we've seen over the last few hundred years.

[Ladyhawk]

7. Actually, science has existed, if not the scientific process.

It's technology, or applied science, that has really taken off. Leonardo da Vinci thought of a lot of cool things, but never tried to apply them to life.

[Squeegee]

9. Other factors that account for rapid technological innovation

1. Reduced religious persecution.
2. Acceptance of scientific thought in general society. This lead to more funding of scientific research, more scientific education, more scientists.
3. Various technological "arms" races, such as the Napoleonic war, WWI, WWII, cold war, race to the moon, economic competition, etc. These helped accelerate the pace of research and innovation.
4. The pace of innovation accelerates with new technology. For example, computers are used to do all the laborious calculation that was once done by hand. Computers are used to build better computers that in turn build even better computers with each generation getting exponentially faster and cheaper. Other examples abound.

All of these things are relatively recent occurrences, all within the last 150 years.

[Digit]

12. and * is taking us back years. Sorry had to interject.

[Maple]

2. This was a plot line in Voyager

They came back to this time, actually a few years ago, and Bill Gates

On edit...we've had science for eons all over the earth, we just keep squelching it. We'd be much further ahead by now if it wasn't for religion and other such things.

[liberalmuse]

3. Why not?

It's as believable as any other theory out there. I think we were seeded. This planet seems to be a library or reserve for DNA storage.

Zecheriah Sitchin is a Hebrew scholar who has some interesting ideas about UFO's and how they tie into the Bible. He has this theory that human beings were bred to be a slave race by the Elohim, and it's not so hard to believe once you consider that humans are easily brainwashed and led around like cattle. How else do you explain how a few are able to enslave millions time and time again throughout history?

[dumpster_baby]

4. Two things: rate of growth of knowledge; and rare earth theory

First, when I as a scientist do something 'scientific', I write about it, and that is published, and others can read about it. Then, when some other scientist is working in that area, he/she can simple access my writings and avoid having to do all that work from scratch.

So the growth of scientic knowledge is not arithmetical: it does not add up 1+1+1.
Instead, the growth of scientific knowledge is geometric. As a "parent" of some science, I can have many many "children" (other scientists who use my research writings), and each of my children can have children of their own.

So like any exponential function, scientific knowledge grows ever faster. What I mean is that if you graph the growth of scientific knowledge, the curve increases at an increasing rate--it curves upward faster and faster, steeper and steeper as time goes on. So the rate of scientific growth increases every year. BTW, getting back to politics, these increasing growth rate is mainly responsible for the better and better consumer goods we see every year. That principle, and NOT free trade and globalization, is what is responsible for better consumer goods. THe Rightwingers would have you believe that, but they lie.

So, it is not surprising that technology is increasing.

I also used to believe that there were machines built by alien intelligent beings were either on earth on near earth. I reasoned that given how long the universe has been in existence, and how large the universe it, it was likely that some intelligent race had been in existence for billions of years, and had had time enough to build self replicating machines (organic or otherwise) which could spread across the universe slowly over the eons.

I reasoned that the UFOs and the creatures supposedly associated with them were some sort of synthetic creatures that had spread slowly across the universe over the ages.

However some fairly new science has come out to show that the universe was until recently not all that friendly a place to be. Until recently, at least in this galaxy and those nearby, there were a lot dangerous events that likely killed off most life periodically.

If you want to find out more, google up the "rare earth" theory of extraterrestrial life.

[punpirate]

5. There are all sorts of variations on this story...

... but, I think, most of them relate to the Army spiriting away the wreckage of a crashed UFO outside of Roswell.

So the tale goes that the wreckage was sent to Wright-Patterson in Ohio, then later transferred to Area 51 in Nevada, and was reverse-engineered over time.

A lot of this has been due to a fellow by the name of Bob Lazar, who claims to have worked on UFO technology at Area 51 in 1988 and 1989. Most of the physics he describes has no basis in the literature; for instance, he claims that the motive power comes from the manipulation of element 115, which supposedly emits a particular sort of gravity wave.

Since no nuclear physicists have been able to create any versions of this (nor have any substances been created which can manipulate or emit gravity waves), it's very doubtful right now that Lazar is doing anything but tittilating the scientifically-unaware UFO crowd. As you can see from this explanation of the motive process, there's no math or theoretical physics to describe the process, even though Lazar has described himself as a physicist:

http://www.mufor.org/lazvid.htm

It might make good science fiction, but it's not supported by any research elsewhere, that I know of.

Cheers.

[Minstrel Boy]

6. Thanks for having the courage to raise the topic. It takes guts.

Nothing is met with as much withering ridicule. And yet, something is going on.

"The Day After Roswell" by the late Col Philip Corso is an interesting, and persuasive, look at reverse engineering. Corso was a distinguished officer who served in military intelligence and on the NSC as lieutenant colonel. While at the Pentagon, he claims, the army's Roswell artifacts landed on his desk (branches of the military had different items from the crash, and jealously guarded them), and he was asked to make them useful. He parcelled them out to Pentagon contractors, who reverse-engineered.

The best book I've read about the "UFO" (though I hate the acronym) phenomenon is Richard Dolan's UFOs and the National Security State, Volume 1: 1941 to 1973 - Anatomy of a Cover-Up. (His second volume should be ready in a couple of years.) A very sober treatment, and well-documented.

His website is here, and he's posted some interesting essays:
http://keyholepublishing.com/index.html

[Dookus]

8. How much

courage does it take to talk about pseudo-scientific claptrap? Tens of millions of people do it every day.

[Squeegee]

14. You mean...

... like this?

http://www.dolphinsociety.org/e34.index.htm

[rockymountaindem]

16. I looked at that site for a couple of minutes...

and I have only one thing to say...

What in the hell was that and are these people for real??????

?????

Well, ok... that was two things, but damn that site is messed up.

[Ladyhawk]

10. I don't think intelligent life would want to come here.

I think the government is hiding something about the Roswell crash, but I doubt it's extra-terrestrial in nature. That's one of those outrageous claims that require outrageous proof. In absence of such proof, I don't believe. Non-belief is the default position. The burden of proof is always on the person making a positive claim. That's why I'm an atheist. No one can prove the existence of god. I've seen nothing that can't be explained by rational thought. So until I see "outrageous proof," I simply don't believe.

In the past six months after seeing Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science, I've become interested in the bigfoot phenomenon. But it, too, is an outrageous claim that requires outrageous proof. I've been reading the Bigfoot Field Researcher's Organization to get more information. Lately, the BFRO has been sponsoring "expeditions" that cost over a thousand bucks per person. People on these expeditions claim they've seen sasquatches with night vision equipment. The last two expeditions have turned up new sightings. This seems really fishy to me. Bigfoot sightings are as rare as hens' teeth, yet suddenly, you pay money to the BFRO and you can go see them. I've come to the unsettling conclusion that the BFRO is hoaxing the people on expedition. Either that, or science is on the cusp of a major breakthrough regarding North America's so-called "great ape." I tend to think there's hoaxing going on, which is disappointing because I'd like to believe.

And on that note: BEWARE OF THAT WHICH YOU WOULD LIKE TO BELIEVE. You will accord more meaning to it than is due.

[Squeegee]

13. Having grown up in Washington State

It was generally known there that Bigfoot was a hoax perpetuated by small towns to bring in tourists. Heck, I remember as a kid going to nearby campgrounds at night with friends and making Bigfoot tracks to just to f*ck with people. Ah, those were the days...

Anyway, the Bigfoot "sightings" have pretty much disappeared once Northern Exposure, Twin Peaks and Nirvana provided a more reliable source of tourist dollars.

[Squeegee]

11. How good could the technology really be?

I mean, you hear about UFOs crashing all the time, in Roswell, in Russia, etc. They seem to be raining out of the sky. It doesn't inspire much confidence in UFO technology, if it exists or not.

[soothsayer]

15. I'm willing to entertain the possibility. Funny that the Aurora (secret

craft, code named Senior Citizen, that is thought to be capable of space flight) shares the name with Aurora, TX---where a UFO in the 1800s crashed and was taken away by the govt.

Maybe our science finally caught up to the point where we could reverse engineer it to an extent!

[jpgray]

17. Several things are expanding at an exponential rate

Population, global trade, speed of communication, and technology. I think you can see the big jump after the Enlightenment only as a coincidence--I think the main factor was establishing communication and trade throughout the cultures of the world. The more varied people put into a system that values innovation and punishes laziness or Luddites, the less chance there is that one group can hold all the rest back.