2 ms·

Try photographing a bird with a phone camera. Then try it with no advance notice, whipping it out and shooting as fast as you can. You'll get a blur, just like

by api 8y ago

Try photographing a bird with a phone camera. Then try it with no advance notice, whipping it out and shooting as fast as you can. You'll get a blur, just like the crappy phone camera photos of "UFOs" all over the Internet. It's an extraordinary claim, sure, but it isn't impossible that some fraction of UFOs are someone else. "They are here but are not making overt contact" is one potential Fermi paradox answer. The apparent abundance of possibly habitable planets demands some answer here I think. There are many rational reasons an alien intelligence would avoid overt contact with some being altruistic (prime directive type thinking), some neutral (same reason we decontaminate space probes), and some selfish (we are aggressive and capable of rapid technological progress).

Zancarius 8y ago
There's also other solutions to the Fermi Paradox that don't require alien contact but likewise don't exclude the possibility for life. For one, it's possible FTL (or FTL-ish) travel isn't something that can be done in our universe. The other is to reflect on what we've done as a species. Consider the last time we sent manned probes to another world--then consider how many unmanned probes. I'm of the mind to believe that if we do encounter anything alien, it'll likely be autonomous or intelligent probes. It'll catalog us and move along. I still stand by my point with cameras. Mobile devices, dash cams, etc., are all vastly prolific. While it's true they don't capture anything far away particularly well, the shear number of these devices ought to suggest that multiple sightings by large groups of people could be corroborated--even if the footage isn't particularly great. But, we're not seeing that. It may not be impossible these UFOs are other intelligences, but it's exceedingly unlikely. More so when you consider that a non-trivial fraction of those same habitable worlds you mention are, at present, speculative at best and around stars that are unfriendly to life at worst. TRAPPIST-1 comes to mind as an example of worlds directly measured via the transit method: A large number of worlds in a habitable zone surrounding a red dwarf known to be a flare star. Then there's another consideration. If life is common in our galaxy (or in the universe), far more intelligent beings may simply be uninterested in us--a relatively pedestrian world around a fairly ordinary star with intelligent primates that haven't yet figured out how to leave their home world with any degree of consistency.

by api 8y ago

Zancarius 8y ago

There's also other solutions to the Fermi Paradox that don't require alien contact but likewise don't exclude the possibility for life. For one, it's possible FTL (or FTL-ish) travel isn't something that can be done in our universe. The other is to reflect on what we've done as a species. Consider the last time we sent manned probes to another world--then consider how many unmanned probes. I'm of the mind to believe that if we do encounter anything alien, it'll likely be autonomous or intelligent probes. It'll catalog us and move along. I still stand by my point with cameras. Mobile devices, dash cams, etc., are all vastly prolific. While it's true they don't capture anything far away particularly well, the shear number of these devices ought to suggest that multiple sightings by large groups of people could be corroborated--even if the footage isn't particularly great. But, we're not seeing that. It may not be impossible these UFOs are other intelligences, but it's exceedingly unlikely. More so when you consider that a non-trivial fraction of those same habitable worlds you mention are, at present, speculative at best and around stars that are unfriendly to life at worst. TRAPPIST-1 comes to mind as an example of worlds directly measured via the transit method: A large number of worlds in a habitable zone surrounding a red dwarf known to be a flare star. Then there's another consideration. If life is common in our galaxy (or in the universe), far more intelligent beings may simply be uninterested in us--a relatively pedestrian world around a fairly ordinary star with intelligent primates that haven't yet figured out how to leave their home world with any degree of consistency.