Slashdot Mirror
Roswell Declassified
John3 writes "Scotland may be the most popular UFO destination on the planet, but Roswell, New Mexico is the old favorite for government conspiracy buffs who believe the US government has been hiding proof of an alien spacecraft crash in 1947. Popular Mechanics has recently gained access to de-classified documents from the Roswell military base, and they contain no entries of unusual events or activity. I wonder if the release of these documents will deter the conspiracy theorists?"
Go into the mountains. Put a unique item of some sort that you can test the uniqueness of (a large random number that you have memorized would work) in a safe and bury it. Note the GPS coordinates.
:)
Now start walking west. When you get back to the coordinates, open the box. Verify the number.
It may not mathematically disprove the earth is flat theory, but if everyone who thought that the earth is flat did this, the rest of us could get some real work done.
(Alternately, you could take a few physics or engineering courses and try to figure out what sort of material could make an object the size and mass of a flat Earth and not collapse into a sphere under its own weight.)
And considering the bizaare circumstances that created life on earth was astrnomically rare (no pun intended :P)only created one sentient lifeform here that we know of the chance of meeting intelligent life in this universe is near null.
I recall one scientist suggesting that if you have life on a planet then intelligence is almost inevitable. After all, he pointed out, it's arisen independently three times on this planet.
But then folks says lots of dumb things, especially when it's not exactly in their field of specialisation. I recall an interview quoting David Brin as saying "if there's life on other planets, we'll probably be able to eat it" -- a brave prediction given there's plenty of stuff on Earth we can't eat, either because it's poisonous or biologically alien to us (e.g. stuff outside the plant and animal kingdoms is frequently highly toxic).
Pondering the probability of imponderables is good work if you can get it. Carl Sagan quotes what he admits is a very crude formula -- 1/10 stars has a planet, 1/100 (?) stars with planets has a habitable planet, 1/10 habitable planets has life, life always develops intelligence, intelligence always builds radio telescopes but only has a 1/10 chance of surviving the invention of nuclear weapons, etc. always seemed to me to be far more sketchy as it got to the right side of the blackboard.
What are the odds that an alien intelligence will have a metabolism in our preferred timescale and thus be able to communicate with us in real time? What are the odds it will "see" and/or "hear" as we see and hear? Would an organism that sees with bat-like Sonar be able to convert a prime x prime grid of pixels into a recognisable image or set of symbols?
Bat-like sonar is a sense possessed by a creature quite closely related to us using parts of a brain very similar to ours. Imagine how alien an alien brain connected to alien sense organs might be.
Then there's the convergent evolution argument (exemplified by David Brin). DNA is obviously the best way to encode genes. Expect aliens made of cells, quite possibly with familiar proteins, carbohydrates, DNA etc. etc.
And who knows, maybe silicon-based life is actually by far the easiest one to come by and we're remarkable in that our solar system appears to be devoid of it. But silicon life all lives much slower-paced lives than we do so we simply couldn't relate to it...
By the way sentient i.e. "having a faculty, or faculties, of sensation and perception" is a rather low bar. There's a huge number of sentient creatures on Earth. If you're going for self aware, dolphins, gorillas, chimpanzees, elephants, dogs, and probably several other animals have demonstrated self-awareness.
Id like to point out the trends of UFO sightings in past happen to coincide with alpha technology of the respective periods
I think Weather balloons are well into beta by now...
That we are indeed alone as far as intelligent life and people are still desperately trying to find something to believe in.
To misquote Steve Martin: "With all the crazy superstitious people out there, I don't know what I'd do without my astrological mood-ring".