Are aliens more likely to be extraterrestrial or interdimensional?

[ubercacher16]

The book The Major is referring to is called Flatland. It's great, you should all read it.

[Aurelin]

The book The Major is referring to is called Flatland. It's great, you should all read it.

That book was amazing!

[Octavious]

Speaking of books, has anyone else read the Long Earth series by Pratchett and Baxter? Quite a fun take on the parallel Earths idea.

[Vaporwave]

The sci-fi crowd is obsessed with aliens

If they exist, clearly they're invisible. Might be tickling some of us right now whilst we're unaware of it

[Octavious]

The sci-fi crowd is obsessed with aliens

If they exist, clearly they're invisible. Might be tickling some of us right now whilst we're unaware of it

Or they're on some of the other billions of planets, perhaps? Whether aliens exist and whether aliens are nearby are two very different questions. I can, for example, be both confident that tigers exist whilst also being confident that you won't find one in my garden.

[Fluminator]

I think everyone at this point is content with believing in aliens. The more interesting topic is if they've ever interfered with earth before.

Does anyone else find it somewhat strange that all religions and mythologies involve beings coming from the sky and dicking around a bit though?

[Octavious]

think everyone at this point is content with believing in aliens.

A curious assertion. What makes you believe that?

Does anyone else find it somewhat strange that all religions and mythologies involve beings coming from the sky and dicking around a bit though?

If it was true, perhaps, but it isn't. The Pagan beliefs of Britain and countless other places were full of spirits and gods of rivers, forests, weather and all sorts of things. Major Gods tend to be associated with places you know exist but are hard to get to. Clouds, mountain tops, the bottom of the sea, the seven celestial bodies. You can't claim that a god lives in the big house down the road without the inconvenient problem of having to explain to everyone trying to visit that he's out.

[MajorMitchell]

If intelligent alien life exists, do they speculate about the existence of life that they would regard as alien (to them)?

[Octavious]

If intelligent alien life exists, do they speculate about the existence of life that they would regard as alien (to them)?

If it's intelligent life, certainly. It seems a very safe assumption to say that the evolution of intelligent life requires an inherent curiosity, as much as the evolution of camouflage requires a threat to hide from. If they are out there they are thinking about us.

[flash2015]

The big question is of course in perhaps only ten thousand years we have gone from cave dwelling knuckle-draggers to sending probes outside of the solar system. You would expect that once we are able to figure out how to live on other planets we will very quickly (in relation to the age of the universe of 13.7B years) colonize the galaxy and the local group of galaxies. Given that the universe is 13.7B years old, surely we can't be the first intelligent life in the universe...or at least in the local galaxy group? Why haven't we met anything yet? Or are we destined to die out before we are able to spread throughout the galaxy?:

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

[Octavious]

The Earth has had life for around four or five billion years. For much of that life was remarkably simple and uninteresting. For the vast majority of the two billion or so years of complex life intelligence wasn't a successful evolutionary strategy. In the vastness of the universe intelligent life is bound to exist, but it could easily be very rare.

In terms of meeting other life, there's no reason beyond wishful thinking to assume interplanetary travel is even possible. It would be pretty depressing, but unless you subscribe to a religious belief that things were created for our benefit you have to acknowledge the possibility that it can't be done.

[flash2015]

The Earth has had life for around four or five billion years. For much of that life was remarkably simple and uninteresting. For the vast majority of the two billion or so years of complex life intelligence wasn't a successful evolutionary strategy. In the vastness of the universe intelligent life is bound to exist, but it could easily be very rare.

In terms of meeting other life, there's no reason beyond wishful thinking to assume interplanetary travel is even possible. It would be pretty depressing, but unless you subscribe to a religious belief that things were created for our benefit you have to acknowledge the possibility that it can't be done.

Yes, that is one of the potential answers to the Fermi paradox unfortunately that interstellar travel may not be possible

[Fluminator]

There's tons of evidence for aliens contacting us. It's just covered up by the governments. Let me go compile some of it.

[Octavious]

There's tons of evidence for aliens contacting us. It's just covered up by the governments. Let me go compile some of it.

Curious how international governments are so unified in their desire to cover it up when they disagree over virtually everything else.

[flash2015]

There's tons of evidence for aliens contacting us. It's just covered up by the governments. Let me go compile some of it.

Absolutely! MIB is a documentary. They just make it a buddy-buddy "comedy" movie so they can more easily hide in plain sight...

[Fluminator]

Ok I’m not compiling. I’ll just do bite sized chunks every so often.

If there were no aliens, why are so many pictures of the moon classified by the government?

[Octavious]

Cutting edge military tech tends to lead civilian tech by around a decade or so, which frustrates civilian scientists no end. Plenty of scientists have come up with a new innovation they think will revolutionise their field only to discover the military have been doing the same thing for years without telling anyone. It seems rather likely that a lot of images of the Moon may be classified in order to stop foreign powers working out how effective, or otherwise, long range photography is.

That's only guesswork, though. I was unaware that there are many classified images of the Moon.

[Octavious]

The ironic thing is that the military tech that ends up in the hands of soldiers on the front lines tends to be a good couple of decades behind what's available to civilians.

[Restitution]

The ironic thing is that the military tech that ends up in the hands of soldiers on the front lines tends to be a good couple of decades behind what's available to civilians.

Depends on the tech? Guessing you are talking about small arms?

[Octavious]

Not so much the weapons as there's no civilian market for them. More things like radios, and army issue boots that seem to pretend that there have been no advances in footwear since the hobnail.