strange story.

[snorsorbet]

I guess that they are all fake / psychoes. As SirFrog said, the probability for a race of aliens nearby is very low, and getting into the solar system without detection must almost be impossible.

@ the guy who "seen an alien with big eyes": I doubt that they look like humans at all (if they exist), and it is not very likely that they have any organ that has the same appearance and functions as a terrestial organ. (I mean terrestial = not extraterrestial)

But still, I hope that human some day will at least see the trace of life from outside the solar system.
Intresting topic, BTW.

[Silverthorn]

I myself didn't see the UFOs but there was a big news report on CNN last year (or was it in 2007? I don't remember anymore) talking about UFO sightings in Texas, about 15 minutes away where I lived. The funny thing was that we actually got a bunch of tourist from all over the US coming to our town to watch any possible remnants the aliens could've left. One guy actually worked as a guide to lead the tourists to the alien sightings. $100 for the tour, $1000 if they actually see aliens

It was more marketing than actual alien-watching. And isn't the USA the center of capitalism, the center of marketing ideas? :P

Like already stated, the chance of seeing an extraterrestrial species is lower than getting struck by lightning while winning the jackpot in a lottery. Just to give some facts according to modern scientific knowledge. Over 1 billion years, the only species on earth were little, stupid protozoa. You wouldn't expect them to build a space ship, fly to a planet which is probably over 20 light years away, say hello, and fly back. The only species on Earth who has been able to build a space ship is human mankind, and the homo sapiens sapiens has been on this planet around 20000 years. 20000 years. Sounds much. Well, no. Earth has been dated to 4.6 billion years, the entire universe to 14 billion years. So, 20000 years would be around.... 0.0001% of all existing time. Now, in this relatively short time span, we've only been able to travel to space for around 50 years.
Now, imagine the evolutionary part. Protozoa evolved to multicellular species by coincidence. Multicellular species adapted to their conditions, they use oxygen to live (disregarding the species that use sulfur and the like). Well, great, most of the live is based on oxygen, water, and sunlight. Without either one of them, we wouldn't be here. Now, imagine a species which breathes (if they breath) hydrogen, drinks (if they drink) mercury and needs total darkness to survive. Would we expect any live under these conditions? No. Would others expect live under the conditions that we have? Maybe. We don't know.
According to Einstein's special theory of relativity, the mass of an object increases the faster we get. At the speed of light, our mass would be infinite, and Newton says that you need a certain force to accelerate something. Therefore you need an infinite amount of energy to be faster than light. Conclusion: if it was possible to "jump" over a certain speed, it would be possible to travel long distances in a convenient time. As this isn't possible, space travel to distant stars is actually just a cool-sounding idea but not realizable whatsoever.

So yea, any questions about aliens saying hello to you?

[Ramond]

I once read a book about true stories that happened.

One of the stories was about a person who nearly was kidnapped by aliens. Some blue ray which caught him from above and he couldn't move (he froze) and he was slightly lifted up into the air. But after some time the ray and the ufo disappeared (in the story it says because his neighbor just came into the street with a car and that probably scared the aliens).

I myself don't know what to think. After all, the universe is so big there has to be something else out there.

Actually, since everything we see, smell, hear, taste and feel is an 'illusion' from the brain and we live in our own world, the brain, I am kinda sceptical about life generally.
There are always surprising things, one after the other. We will never find out everything.

Just seems so unreal. The wish to be free is just so dominating...

[SirFrog]

I have to agree with you, BP, but we (humans in general) are investigating space-time bending, giving us the ability to bend the space-time (Yep, you could NEVER have guessed) making two places separated with any distance, to instantly appear just next to each other. We have successfully generated such a rift in between Earth and the moon, big enough to send a photon through, bounce at the moon's surface, and return, faster than the speed of light. This is due to that the rift moves that particle at infinite speed.
But however, this has a problem. we all know that photons (light particles) are extremely small and can not be destroyed as far as we know. So, what would happen if we send complex matter (with multiple particles, such as an apple) through that hole? there are a number of possibilities:
1. It pass through the rift without problem. Nothing will change on it.
2. Most of it is intact, but some particles are scrambled.
3. It is completely scrambled.
4. The atoms themselves disintegrate and the object arrives as a heap of particles.
Any of these could happen. Despite, the hole opened was extremely small, and required an ENORMOUS amount of energy, making it a very bad way of travel for now. Also, to be able to use this, you most know EXACTLY where you want to open the two rift openings. The rifts are to be compared to black holes.
Hm, this with rifts back and forth reminds me of Portal.

Edit:
@Ramond (and the thread): I don't know what to believe about the people who thinks (or according to them knows) they've been abducted by aliens, but sleep paralysis could explain it. What happens is that the brain wakes up from sleep but the body don't, leaving the, let's call it victim, completely paralyzed. The brain does also hallucinate showing images that may appear dream-like, often because certain parts of the brain is still sleeping. The hallucinations vary from person to person, but it often shows as something frightening. Today, the most usual one (or the thought most usual one, depending on point of view) is aliens, conducting experiments or abducting the person. In the medieval, it most appeared as demons from hell and witches, and the phenomena was referred to as "being ridden by the hag", due to that the peoples worst fears was not aliens, but demons and magical beings.
But i still don't say it's impossible that people actually ARE abducted by aliens. It's just that i try to serve an explanation about this phenomena.

[Silverthorn]

The thing with the atoms is a little wrong terminology. Let's talk about matter. What is matter? Everything that we see, taste, feel, smell, and indirectly hear. Now, what's light? Physicists are arguing. Light has two properties. Some, like bending light, leaves the conclusion that it is a wave, other properties are similar to particles. In this way, light is a strange thing in between wave and particle.

Now about matter: matter has a set amount of energy, directly related to it's mass. This energy is defined by Einstein's famous formula E=mc²
Now, what does this tell us? The speed of light, c, is a pretty big number, roughly 3x10⁸ m/s. So, an object of, let's say 1kg (at 0m/s, otherwise the mass would be higher) would be dissolved into energy completely, an energy of 1x9x10¹⁶J would be unleashed. This is big. Very big. Fortunately (for us) there's just one possibility to dissolve matter: by colliding it with anti-matter. And we don't have that. If it was here around us, everything would simply annihilate itself. We'd have enormous amounts of energy, allowing us to travel at a speed close to light, therefore it is a pure risk and we probably wouldn't exist if that anti-matter was close to us....
What I want to say with that: assuming that there is a higher species that has learned to "control" matter and anti-matter, thus creating wormholes. Now, what does a wormhole do? In short, it is decreasing a way of many thousand light years to a couple meters by going through a 4-dimensional "building" (oh gosh, let's just nod our heads ). Now, how're you gonna "build" a wormhole? You cannot use regular matter. The wormhole would simply collapse. What you need is matter (not anti-matter) which has negative weight. Negative weight means: there is negative gravitational force....

You see where the problems are? It's getting too absurd. Let's not talk about such traveling methods, if you start studying them there are more and more problems coming up. I'll stop here before the rest of my brain volatizes....

[Zabobula]

To put it plain and simple, WE ARE NOT ALONE IN THIS UNIVERSE. There are more than just us simple humans out there. Aliens exist and they aren't visiting our planet for no reason...O_O

[snorsorbet]

What you need is matter (not anti-matter) which has negative weight. Negative weight means: there is negative gravitational force....

I have heard something known as "dark energy", which has anti gravitational properties (?). Dunno if it has been actually proved yet, I guess that it is still very theoretical.

But don't take my word too serious; I am not very sure where I heard about that stuff.

[Drahcir]

I once read a short story in a textbook where a guy gets drunk on Christmas and goes off in his truck. Soon, he leaves it and wanders over to some Japanese family's house, and they invite him in. There's a fax machine with all these blinking lights and they're all dressed in red pyjamas. They serve him tea, and some kid says, "You'd better save some room for chicken dinner"

Shortly after he leaves, there's an article in the National Enquirer where that same guy claims he got kidnapped by aliens. He mentions their strange looks (red pyjamas, asian...ness), their equipment (fax machine), and their "truth drink" (tea). Last but not least, there's the one line he remembers: "Save the moon for Kerdy Dickus" (save some room for chicken dinner)

[kururu]

You see where the problems are? It's getting too absurd. Let's not talk about such traveling methods, if you start studying them there are more and more problems coming up. I'll stop here before the rest of my brain volatizes....

i don't want to learn them. i just want to know everyone's story about U.F.O.

i've heard another sory from a book(i don't know is it true or not).
it said at one day in the past there is an UFO fall on somewhere(i don't know) and the (i don't know the english) conqueror or... president buy the location because the UFO cannot be moved so... like that...

[no one]

@BP: You seem to be focus too much on the physic. Let try biology.
As you guy all know human's cells can regenerate to heal our damage organ. But the number of time each human's cells can regenerate is limited. That why we die. Same go for all other living being, there's no exception. But we know that the number of time that those cells can regenerate are different for each species. That mean some have more than us and some don't. And we haven't known about the life support condition on the other planets. There are maybe some species can live for centurys or even more, so all they have to do is to go with the maximum speed and enjoy the show.

If they can't make it that far before they die, then there are some more method to help them reach our planet:

As you said before, we have live for about 0.0001% of all existing time. If those species have live for about 20% of those time and have a brain close to us, they could invent something that can help their brain still working even if their bodies are no longer exist. We all know that if our heart stop beatting, we're still alive as long as our brain still work. We just die because there's not enough blood to feed our brains. So if the brain still work, you still there. So all they got to do is to keep it work aka become a cyborg so they could live forever.

There's another possibilities that they can't live very long but they can use about 15% of there brain power (consider there brain are just like us). Human can use only 3% tought and with only those 3%, in 1903 we flew for the first time, 66 years later, we landed on our moon. Now, with a brains that's 5 time better than us what do you think they can do if they live as long as us? Just imagine this, well, you know that space-time has ten dimensions. There are the normal dimensions of up/down, left/right, and forward/back. Then there is the fourth dimension, which is time. Then, there are six other dimensions, but they are curled up into themselves, so we don't see or feel them. All we feel are three space dimensions, plus time. Imagine if, instead of three normal space dimensions, we only had two. Imagine we were flat, and we couldn't go up or down, just in the other two directions. Like if we lived on a piece of paper. Call us the Flatties. And if someone came along and drew a box around us, we could never get out. Because the lines of the box would be walls. But what if a three-dimensional person came along? A threedimensional person could lift that Flattie right up out of that box. The Flattie wouldn't even know what was happening, because he's never gone up or down before. He doesn't even know up and down exist. So if some creature came along who have a lot more brain power than us, he'd be able to do things that would be impossible for us.

The last things I can think of is that we don't know how many very real chances there are that somewhere beyond our ability to scope, some new element still exist. They could be more powerful than 10 solar system combine. If the aliens can use them, light speed is no problem. And one last things, how many ray can we detected? They could live very close to us, but our telescopes can't see them, and none of our detectors can pick up any trace of life form out there because we don't know what to look. So we don't know that they are still exist.

@Kururu:
I don't get it.