UFOs, Big Foot, Loch Ness

[TGHusker]

To continue our off season, non-political discussion, I have a new poll.  Kind of related to the paranormal poll but taking a

more 'physical' slant. 

Do UFO's exist

His Big Foot roaming the forests near you  (seems like he has been 'seen' in about every state but primarily it seems NW USA)

Is  Loch Ness swimming under a boat in that English lake. 

[Danny Bateman]

UFOs: Yep. With all of existence being as massive as it is, I have a hard time believing we're the only intelligent life anywhere (even if we haven't made contact with any of them yet). There is scientific evidence of a few planets that could support life - the next step will be confirming life actually existed somewhere. And bear in mind our compendium of knowledge consists only of what we have the ability to study - the universe is massive & we can only realistically explore a tiny fraction of it at this point.

 

Bigfoot - Nope. I dig all the lore around mythical creatures, but just zero evidence & too many instances of people faking it.

 

Nessie - Nope. The legend of Nessie is so cool to me that for a long time I really wanted it to be true, but again, no evidence beyond hoaxes. 

[Nebfanatic]

 

I never really believed that aliens, if they existed, would be advanced enough to make it across lightyears in a spacecraft just to come to our planet. But this account that I just found out about recently has opened my mind a little more to the possibility. These are just 2 good ole Mississippi boys. Their story is very consistent.

 

Its local legend here on the Gulf Coast, this is where I heard about it. Apparently there was quite a bit of strange activity happening all along the coast in that time (early 70s)

Edited January 26, 2018 by Nebfanatic

[BigRedBuster]

3 minutes ago, dudeguyy said:

UFOs: Yep. With all of existence being as massive as it is, I have a hard time believing we're the only intelligent life anywhere (even if we haven't made contact with any of them yet). There is scientific evidence of a few planets that could support life - the next step will be confirming life actually existed somewhere. And bear in mind our compendium of knowledge consists only of what we have the ability to study - the universe is massive & we can only realistically explore a tiny fraction of it at this point.

 

The question was, "do you believe UFOs have visited Earth".

 

Do you believe that intelligent life from another planet has visited Earth?

[knapplc]

These are all topics, like the occult, divination, spiritualism, etc, that I have been fascinated with since I was a little kid.  Loved reading up on UFOs, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, Crop Circles, all that stuff.  But

 

UFOs - Chose "Other."  It's complicated.  Space is vast, there are trillions upon trillions of planets out there.  Tom Selleck hosted a great series back in the 1990s called "The Practical Guide to the Universe," and in one episode he gave super pessimistic odds, like if one percent of all stars had planets and only one percent of those could support life and only one percent of those did have life, and only one percent of those had intelligent life, and only one percent of those... etc, etc, etc, there would still be millions and millions of civilizations out there as advanced or more advanced than we are.  So I think it's likely that there is intelligent life out there. 

 

Have they visited us?  Don't know.  I have a hard time believing that intelligent life would come all the way across space to Earth, show themselves as lights in the sky, but not contact us in any specific way.  What's the logic in that? And if they have interstellar technology, surely they have the ability to keep us from seeing them, right?  So eh.  I doubt all the UFO sightings out there are real. 

 

But... some may be real.  Hard to say.  This isn't proof, but it's damned interesting.  What is that thing?  How is it flying?   I have no answer for this.

 

 

Bigfoot - super interesting to think that we could have an ape-like or neanderthal-like cousin hanging around, but as with UFOs, there's no proof. Bigfoot is different, being land-based, and necessarily leaving spoor, tracks, habitation evidence... we'd have found something by now.  There is no such thing as Bigfoot. 

 

The Loch Ness Monster - this was one of the most fascinating things to me as a kid.  It looks like a plesiosaur, but much like Bigfoot, if it existed we'd have seen it by now.  Numerous very detailed studies have been done of Loch Ness, and there's nothing there. A breeding population of a creature that size in a lake that (relatively) small could not go undetected this long.  Just not possible. 

 

[TGHusker]

^^ I've seen that UFO video before.  Pretty amazing.  I wonder how close they got to it - whatever it was.   I forgot about the whole crop ring thing.  Reminds me of the Mel Gibson movie.  That was one spooky movie.   

[Kiyoat Husker]

I heard something on public radio a couple of days ago that relates to the UFO thing.  It was a performer that was playing music while telling a story about his Russian astrophysicist drinking buddy.  In the story he asked his Russian friend if he thought extra-terrestrial intelligent life exists, and if so, why haven't they contacted us.

 

He said the first question is easy.  Yes, there are too many opportunities for life to have evolved on other planets for intelligent life to NOT have happened elsewhere.  Probably many, many times.

 

To answer the second question he had to use an analogy...

 

I'll have to finish the story tomorrow.

[Kiyoat Husker]

Just kidding.  I didn't want to make too long of a post.

 

So, if you imagine the entire known universe as existing in an area the size of a beach ball, and all of time to exist in about five minutes, how long would the existence of earth's humans take?  

 

We as a species won't exist forever.  At some point we will die off.  5,000 more years?  A billion?  Either way our existence could be represented in time like this: (he snaps his fingers).  

 

Now imagine another intelligent society over here,... *points inside the imaginary beach ball* then he snaps again.

 

And now here *snap*, and here, *snap*, and here *snap*, et cetera. 

 

The point is that even if many many different intelligent species evolve in the universe, it is so vast both in space AND time, that the odds of encountering each other are still extremely low.

 

Many intelligent societies on other planets have probably already come and gone before we even existed as a species, and many will likely exist long after we are gone.

 

kind of a lonely thing, right?

[RedDenver]

 

[Kiyoat Husker]

17 minutes ago, RedDenver said:

 

 

Thanks!  Very informative and engaging video!  A little more optimistic than the explanation I gave, too.

[knapplc]

There's also this rather sobering Fermi Paradox theory about alien life - and ours.

 

 

[BIG ERN]

1 hour ago, Kiyoat Husker said:

Just kidding.  I didn't want to make too long of a post.

 

So, if you imagine the entire known universe as existing in an area the size of a beach ball, and all of time to exist in about five minutes, how long would the existence of earth's humans take?  

 

We as a species won't exist forever.  At some point we will die off.  5,000 more years?  A billion?  Either way our existence could be represented in time like this: (he snaps his fingers).  

 

Now imagine another intelligent society over here,... *points inside the imaginary beach ball* then he snaps again.

 

And now here *snap*, and here, *snap*, and here *snap*, et cetera. 

 

The point is that even if many many different intelligent species evolve in the universe, it is so vast both in space AND time, that the odds of encountering each other are still extremely low.

 

Many intelligent societies on other planets have probably already come and gone before we even existed as a species, and many will likely exist long after we are gone.

 

kind of a lonely thing, right?

 

You would first have to believe in the Big Bang. That 'life' is a complete accident and .0000000000000000000000000001% chance of happening.

IMO the answer isn't how the world was created. It is why. With the big bang there is no why or want. You have a ball of gas and what not. What's wrong with that? Nothing there to push anything forward for any greater cause. Yet they follow set rules and boundaries to get where they are today

[Redux]

Alien life exists elsewhere, to think otherwise is just dense.  It may be a kajiliion lightyears away but the likelihood that we are it is not only incredibly unrealistic, it's just sad.  We may never find the truth out on that one though.

 

Bigfoot, if he was real, probably died or got captured some time ago.  I would suspect an offshoot of some other already existing species.

 

Nessie is just an urban legend unfortunately, I loved that myth when I was a kid.

Edited January 26, 2018 by Redux

[Kiyoat Husker]

9 minutes ago, BIG ERN said:

 

You would first have to believe in the Big Bang. That 'life' is a complete accident and .0000000000000000000000000001% chance of happening.

 

 

You don't have to believe all of the things you mentioned.  That is, like, three separate things.  You can believe or not believe them in any combination.  Further, they are not a prerequisite for belief in extra-terrestrial life.  

 

You don't have to just be a Christian or just believe in science.  Many of us can do both.

[Guy Chamberlin]

As Neil DeGrasse Tyson points out, the U in UFO simply means Unidentified.

 

It's a huge and generally unwarranted leap to interstellar visitation.

 

And while I dearly loved all the Chariots of the Gods? speculation as a younger person, I finally figured out that our ancestors were simply more advanced than we gave them credit for, and the prevalent myth of sky visitors wasn't exactly evidence