Who Wouldn't Chat Inside This Thread

[ilikeplanets]

JJ please annihilate that other one

[ilikeplanets]

The three people that post in the chat thread have spoken

Credit to JoBerg for the fun title

[ilikeplanets]

Okay so here's a topic

Is anyone expecting anything notable from the UFO hearing today?

[topleybird]

No, particularly since this guy apparently saw/read absolutely nothing firsthand and has so far been dancing around even repeating stuff he's said in past interviews

But I do find the whole topic fascinating, as it seems like the gov't has openly admitted that someone out there has been flying shit around for decades that we can't even begin to understand, like that's a huge self-own if nothing else

If there's some in-depth investigation that comes out of this, that'd be cool, but today's just about a guy saying "Yeah my buddy swears we have a UFO in a location I can't identify"

[redbreegull]

I believe there is near-certainty that alien life exists

However I have come to sadly believe they have never visited Earth

I do think some of these UFO sightings have validity, but I have to guess there are other unexplained phenomena behind them

[topleybird]

Same

Also, if aliens did eventually make contact and were like "We were waiting until you'd achieved cold fusion" or whatever level of technology I'd be like "What a bunch of fucking nerds, did you bring your Magic The Gathering cards? Come back with your cool people"

[yo soy el mejor]

Take me to your sushi

[redbreegull]

The Fermi Paradox is a mindfuck

I mean consider that Earth is within a few decades of being able to send microprobes outside the solar system at 1/4 the speed of light with ground based microlasers. And self replicating tech is not that far off either. Within a few thousand years we could potentially fill a large portion of our own galaxy with tech like this. So where is everyone else? The Universe has been around for 14 billion years and life on Earth started within the first billion years of its existence. Are we really that special? Are we the first? Is there some sort of cold fusion prime directive that against all odds everyone else obeys? Or does everyone destroy themselves before they get to the stars?

Are we alone? I want to believe

[ilikeplanets]

I think it's more likely that the intelligent life is outside of our dimension, possibly by multiple levels, so "making contact" is likely a futile pursuit

[ilikeplanets]

We'll have better luck in the realm of intelligent machines

[Disco King]

Originally Posted by ilikeplanets

I think it's more likely that the intelligent life is outside of our dimension, possibly by multiple levels, so "making contact" is likely a futile pursuit

What does "dimension" refer to, in this context?

[ilikeplanets]

dimensional planes

[ilikeplanets]

What are the limits of possibilities navigating the 4th dimension with the type of body we are burdened with? Are we nearly there?

[ilikeplanets]

And by "type of body" I mean 3D, nothing more specific to Earthly biology

[LaBelle]

[yo soy el mejor]

undeniably food, ooh!

[Disco King]

Originally Posted by ilikeplanets

What are the limits of possibilities navigating the 4th dimension with the type of body we are burdened with? Are we nearly there?

We do already interact with four dimensions: three spatial and one temporal.

If you mean "four spatial dimensions," like, being able to move along a fourth dimension of space orthogonal to the other three, I don't think we currently have much reason to believe there are any spatial dimensions beyond the familiar three. For one, gravity would be a lot weaker if there were four spatial dimensions, because the gravitational attraction between masses would weaken by their distance cubed rather than by their distance squared.

Different versions of String Theory posit more than three spatial dimensions. Most posit 10 (nine spatial, one temporal) or 11 (10 spatial, one temporal), and one posits 26. The dimensions proposed by string theories are not like the ordinary spatial dimensions we are familiar with, though. They are compactified and "curled up" around the familiar dimensions, rather than being expansive.

However, String Theory isn't really accepted by most physicists because it hasn't really generated any testable predictions or developed much as a research program in the 50 years since it's been proposed. It's a bunch of mathematical machinery that can produce results that align with observations we've already made, but constructing theories that account for what we've already seen without telling us about something we haven't seen yet and being right about it isn't the hard part (well, I mean, it is hard, because I definitely am not good enough at math and don't understand physics enough to come up with String Theory, but you know what I mean). At this point, it's mostly pop-scientists that write books about it because it sounds really cool and sells to general, non-expert audiences, but mainstream physicists have mostly lost interest in String Theory some decades back.

[ilikeplanets]

People also used to think the Earth was the center of the universe. We're always one huge discovery away from a total shift in belief.

[topleybird]

I for one am still incredibly unclear what belief you're even talking about

[topleybird]

Also I'm not a huge fan of the line of reasoning "People prior to the 1500s generally believed the wrong thing about our universe and then someone proposed the right thing; therefore anything, untethered from centuries of scientific research and understanding, which I now propose stands just as good a chance of being true, too"

[vixnix]

Originally Posted by redbreegull

The Fermi Paradox is a mindfuck

I mean consider that Earth is within a few decades of being able to send microprobes outside the solar system at 1/4 the speed of light with ground based microlasers. And self replicating tech is not that far off either. Within a few thousand years we could potentially fill a large portion of our own galaxy with tech like this. So where is everyone else? The Universe has been around for 14 billion years and life on Earth started within the first billion years of its existence. Are we really that special? Are we the first? Is there some sort of cold fusion prime directive that against all odds everyone else obeys? Or does everyone destroy themselves before they get to the stars?

Are we alone? I want to believe

I was going to ask where you get your information because you presented it so confidently and I didn’t realise there was consensus when it came to age of the universe

But then I thought no, don’t be lazy, just Google it.

[vixnix]

Originally Posted by Disco King

We do already interact with four dimensions: three spatial and one temporal.

If you mean "four spatial dimensions," like, being able to move along a fourth dimension of space orthogonal to the other three, I don't think we currently have much reason to believe there are any spatial dimensions beyond the familiar three. For one, gravity would be a lot weaker if there were four spatial dimensions, because the gravitational attraction between masses would weaken by their distance cubed rather than by their distance squared.

Different versions of String Theory posit more than three spatial dimensions. Most posit 10 (nine spatial, one temporal) or 11 (10 spatial, one temporal), and one posits 26. The dimensions proposed by string theories are not like the ordinary spatial dimensions we are familiar with, though. They are compactified and "curled up" around the familiar dimensions, rather than being expansive.

However, String Theory isn't really accepted by most physicists because it hasn't really generated any testable predictions or developed much as a research program in the 50 years since it's been proposed. It's a bunch of mathematical machinery that can produce results that align with observations we've already made, but constructing theories that account for what we've already seen without telling us about something we haven't seen yet and being right about it isn't the hard part (well, I mean, it is hard, because I definitely am not good enough at math and don't understand physics enough to come up with String Theory, but you know what I mean). At this point, it's mostly pop-scientists that write books about it because it sounds really cool and sells to general, non-expert audiences, but mainstream physicists have mostly lost interest in String Theory some decades back.

Thank you for taking the time to explain this. Someone gave me the Elegant Universe by Brian Greene 20 years ago but I found his writing style unpleasant so gave up.

After having to read so much Kant at university I find it really difficult to force myself to read anything. So a couple of paragraphs like you’ve presented here is so useful, thank you

[ilikeplanets]

Originally Posted by topleybird

Also I'm not a huge fan of the line of reasoning "People prior to the 1500s generally believed the wrong thing about our universe and then someone proposed the right thing; therefore anything, untethered from centuries of scientific research and understanding, which I now propose stands just as good a chance of being true, too"

Why? You think we've exhausted the angles from which to observe things, or...?

[ilikeplanets]

Explain your strong beliefs to me. Everyone.

[ilikeplanets]

Also, I was talking about how I don't think superintelligent corporeal aliens are out there in abundance, mostly.

[ovary]

i think "aliens" are here but i am not sure they are extraterrestrial beings in ships. i think they are more in the realm of faeries. ghosts, aliens, bigfoot, etc.--they're all in on it. somehow manifestiations of some kind of energy our senses can't really experience, more than fleeting glimpses anyway.

there's too much evidence of a this stuff for it not to be "real." everyone has a ghost story or a ufo story or a wisp or whatever. everyone!! how does this evidence somehow not count?

[ourruseoffools]

Started up vocal lessons today for the first time in years. Glow up era 4.0 is going crazzzzyyyy

[ourruseoffools]

Don’t know what u guys are talking about but sounds like some tom delonge shit

[ilikeplanets]

Also, if aliens are non-corporeal, or if anything is, what dimension is that? Explain it in a soul-crushing, curiosity-dashing, definitive way for me, as a being of complete universal knowledge can.

[Disco King]

Originally Posted by ilikeplanets

People also used to think the Earth was the center of the universe. We're always one huge discovery away from a total shift in belief.

Sure, but the time to adopt a belief is after the relevant evidence/discovery has been made, not before, imo.

Right now, I think it's much more likely that there are other planets with life than that the structure of the universe is completely different from what all our observations and most successful theories currently say it and we have to change everything we think about how gravity and electromagnetism work.