I've never heard this before!

Plus, there's not one shred of evidence for such a thing. Not one shred.

If there's one thing that nature tells us, it is that singular truth.

Einstein, for instance, has been correct about everything. There is not going to be any warp drives, which is just a plot mechanism to get the Star Trek narrative past the next commercial. (Don't get me wrong, I love Star Trek. I just don't pretend it's real.)

Interstellar travel is damned near impossible. The distances are just too fucking great and the speed limit -- C ~= 300,000,000 m/s -- too damned slow. Then there's time dilation, a rather severe penalty to anybody who tries interstellar travel.

The universe conspires to prevent interstellar travel. Nevertheless some idiots think that the space aliens are crash landing everywhere. They've mastered interstellar travel, but somehow cannot handle the landing. RIGHT? Either that, or they are everywhere, look just like humans, and everybody at NASA and the government are hiding the fact that they exist.

Well, some people are just fucking nuts.

They think that any made up shit can be true.

in this gigantic universe. We can't even get along with each other. I am certain there is far more intelligent life that knows how to live in harmony and warp across the Universe. We don't know sh't compared to them.

That's Star Trek, a fictional universe where the narrative required a mechanism to get past the commercial break.

Same thing with the transporter. (Consider the continuity problem with that one.)

SciFi is fun, but there's a reason why it's called science fiction.

Have fun. But probably no warp drives.

Interstellar travel is a real bitch.

I'll get back to you when it is perfected.

The dilithium crystals are almost puddles!!! If we don't back off, we'll be dead in the water in no time at all.

(Love Commander Scott!)

If so, the chances that they are at the same stage of technological advancement as we are is very slim, right?

I said that interstellar travel is fucking difficult and there is likely no possible warp drives to help as that would violate well known principles of physics.

That's an answer to the Fermi paradox. The answer to the question, "Where are they?" is "They are trapped in their planetary systems by the outlandish distances between stars." That would make interstellar travel very rare. And if there were no warp drives, that is very likely to be correct.

I do not think warp drives exist anywhere.

more advanced than us.

The universe is what the universe is and there doesn't seem to be any way to travel faster than light speed. In fact, I think even relativistic travel imposes such harsh penalties that likely very few try it.

The costs of relativistic travel are considerable, even true if one has matter/anti-matter power, the best possible. And where does one get anti-matter in large lots? And what insane life form would even try to store anti-matter in large lots? They likely don't exist because they all die in a flash of gamma rays.

Then there's time dilation! When one leaves ones planet at relativistic speeds, one is leaving more than ones home. One is leaving ones time, too. That is unavoidable. Maybe any interstellar travelers are more likely in our future.

My opinion is that very few alien societies try interstellar travel beyond robotic missions. The galaxy is really big, and mostly empty. I would not expect to see any hard evidence for intelligent alien life.

Have a happy new year!
🎉🎊

I thought most of us had moved past that.

It's hard to believe that of the billions of stars and even more planets Earth is the only place that intelligent life has evolved.

I said that interstellar travel is a real bitch and that the nature of the universe is likely such that there's not going to be a Commander Scott tending warp drive engines.

Happy New Year to you and yours.

a gazillion sightings over these many years isn't "evidence."

As for interstellar travel being difficult -- only for Earthlings, really. These other civilizations have it down pat. Clearly.

So Einstein was wrong?
Sheesh!

Universe far too complex to say what limits are yet.

Dimensions??????

Right. That's the answer.


BTW, Einstein describes gravitation with additional dimensions.

Let alone intergalactic distances.

Another fundamental problem is that any species is going to last at best a million years, and that doesn't allow very much time to develop interstellar travel and then visit a planet when that planet has intelligent life on it.

Over 98% of all species that have lived on Earth are extinct.

I love George Carlin's Save the Planet routine. (Yes, I am an environmentalist, and I drive a Volvo, but this is high art. Plus, it is scientifically accurate.)

Chariots of the Gods. I read it as a teenager and turned my nose up at it. But now I'm wondering if it might not have something interesting in it.

Yes. He is.
He was convicted of embezzlement and perjury, in Denmark.

His entire "Chariots Of The Gods" is a fraud, and it's racist to boot.

Only the "brown people" needed help from aliens to be able to tie their shoes, Von Daniken never used examples in Europe to shore up his bogus 'ancient aliens" stuff.

Interesting? Yes, if you use the National Enquirer standard of "information."

(absotively for short)

invalidates every word he ever thought, spoke or wrote, doesn't it?

Thanks for the information -- I'll keep it in mind (and I'm sure I could NOT possibly have identified the inherent racism without you), but it doesn't dissuade me from wanting to reread it since your premise relies on a logical fallacy.

That a liar can "change his ways?"

Would you read any books by Jerome Corsi?

He's a confirmed liar, but is still writing. (I think he's a staffer nowadays for Alex Jones.)

The guy who wrote that "autobiography" called "American Sniper" was caught multiple times making shit up.

Should his book be considered "credible" at all?

You can't LOGICALLY declare everything a person says, thinks or has written as invalid just because there are some things that aren't accurate.

Besides, in your case, do you not have a bias against the entire field (UFOs, etc.)? That matters too.

we'll have cameras with the resolution to capture these sightings.

We can't take pictures of what are just imagination adding "details" to an odd light in the sky.

tarnish off your buckles.

Winthrop wrote that earlier in the year James Everell, “a sober, discreet man,” and two others had been rowing a boat in the Muddy River, which flowed through swampland

"Some have speculated that the curious glow could have been an “ignis fatuus,” a pale light that can appear over marshland at nighttime due to the combustion of gas from decomposed organic matter.

If Winthrop’s report was correct, however, the light was not rising from the swamp but shooting across the sky, making that explanation unlikely."

My 2¢,
either 'time travel' from the future,
or travel from another dimension.

Don't say it's not possible;
I read it on the Internet.

(Cue the 'Twilight Zone' theme song)

claimed to have seen witches, so it's hard to say whether the reports of strange lights were true. A red flag popped up for me when I read “when it ran, it was contracted into the figure of a swine.” Puritans often described the appearance of Satan as that of a hog or other animal, or as a combination of animal and human. Puritans were known to fabricate stories. Even if the initial report of strange lights was true, reports of similar sightings that followed may have been- make that, probably were - made up.

Whatever they saw, they saw it through a very strong lens of their own beliefs.