So, I saw a UFO today!

[Radhnoti]

10 or so years ago it was 2 AM and a friend and I were driving home on a local parkway, barely passed another car the entire night. I glanced up and noticed a lot of stars were blotted out by a large, dark shape. I stop the car and we get out and look up. The shape was rectangular and there were four semi-bright lights at each corner, but we were unable to see the mid-section except that it was blotting out the stars behind it. I have no way to gauge it's size at this point...not until it passes directly overhead. There's NO noise at all, and the thing is the size of a football field...that's assuming it was CLOSE overhead, it could've been bigger, in the darkness it was hard to tell. It moves a bit away, again no point of reference for me to give good distances, then flips from horizontal to vertical and sideways (the lights and stars it's blocking seeming to show it was mostly a flattened shape, like RD's I assume)...then accelerates away and disappears in approximately 2 minutes.

My friend and I went from excited chatter (What is that? A blimp? Way too big! There's no noise?) to complete silence as it sped away. No way something that big and quiet should have disappeared over the horizon that quickly.
I'd love to know what that thing was...

[SevenStar]

we're the aliens, man...we're the aliens. well, not exactly. But the Nommo genetically altered our ancestors to create ****sapien and they reside in a liquid filled pod that appears as a moon of Saturn. We await their return, but not until the deserts fill with water and the moat around the Sphinx is ready for amphibians.

Nommo? Are you into Dogon history?

[Royal Dragon]

Radhnoti,
Yeah, that sounds like what I saw, only mine was broad daylight. It didn't pass over me, but was miles east of me at it's closest point.

When I first saw it, it was in the South Suburbs. I didn't realise how huge it was untill I saw it directly east of me when it was moving fast. By the time I pulled over, got my camera out an reset it to it's maximum resolution, it was almost too far to see anymore. If i hadn't had a camera that originally retailed at just under $1000.00, we would not be able to see it in the photo, as clearly as we do.

I got it's exact shape, and everything. It's probably the only UFO pic ever to NOT be blurry and out of focus.

I'd love to know what it was, and how something that huge, shaped like a knocked over building can fly so fast despite the worst areodynamics that can be imagined.

If you look at my pic, you see one end is a bit rounded. That is the back. It flew with the flat, angulated end as the front.

[mantiskilla]

Nommo? Are you into Dogon history?

hahhaha...I didnt think anyone would get it. yes. but i've read some things contradicting the time frame of their knowledge of Sirius B and C.
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18TEEN

[Ray Pina]

W

Go check the figures on how long it takes a beam of light to reach Pluto from the sun. Then imagine how all things moving slower than the speed of light (probably mere fractions of) would take to actually travel planet to planet ...
Now imagine traveling from star to star.

The problem is you're imagining things with the limited mind of a man of 2007. Nothing travels faster than light.... that WE know about NOW.

The man of 1790 couldn't imagine affordable air travel for the masses never mind taking a spaceship up to the moon to have a walk and a hit a golf ball.

In a world where anything is possible anything can happen

[BruceSteveRoy]

If we are experimenting with time travel, then it stands to reason that we have already altered our own past for any number of reasons ranging from lamo attempts at correcting the continuum, to reversing a severe error that does huge damage etc etc. But ultimately it could also mean that we ourselves essentially become our own gods and live in a perpetual cycle that is non-linear and instead is on a loop of say a few million years, or at least long enough that we go through x amounts of growths and destructions and cannot historically remember anything beyond a few thousand years.

Not necessarily true. i always thought that humans will never discover time travel bc if it was possible that would mean, like you said, time isn't linear. which is to say that a does not follow b does not follow c. if this were the case we would have already noticed us traveling into points prior to the invention of time travel. if time is not linear than it wouldn't be a question of will we discover time travel the question is have we discovered it. bc since a does not follow b past present and future are not relevent markers. but i resolved with myself that i firmly believe that time IS, in fact, linear. i was born i lived i died and if it goes in any other order than beware bc that wouldme i am an evil dead and zombiegeddon is happening. take cover. anyway the reason i have been able to resolve the linear nature of time and the possibility of time travel is from my limited study of quantum mechanics. a very watered down explanation of one concept in quantum theory is that when an action occurs at that point on the time line every possible outcome occurs. so it is still linear in an infinite number of directions. like a fractal. so if we were to discover time travel tomorrow we will have created a divergent reality and thus a divergent past to travel into. and for the nearly infinite number or realities that created time travel simultaneously there would be just as many that don't. so this means these paradoxical time loops wouldn't happen. or so they tell me.
regards,
~Steve
p.s. sorry if that was a rambling nonsense. i tried to organize my thoughts as best i could. i think i may have failed. lol

[SevenStar]

hahhaha...I didnt think anyone would get it. yes. but i've read some things contradicting the time frame of their knowledge of Sirius B and C.

I've been into them for a minute. Back around 2000 or 2001 I knew a guy who was really big into bukti negara silat. I trained with him on several occasions, and in one day while we were talking, he brought up the dogons. I started reading about them and have been intrigued ever since. What did you find?

[mantiskilla]

the 'Sirius Mystery' (not an easy read,like you need notes to keep up, but lots of interesting information if true) goes into their history pretty in depth. I read an article within the last year or so that went into when the Dogon knew what. Basically the articles idea was that the French anthropologists that lived with the tribe back in the 1930's may have given them information about Sirius B. So the fact that everyone made such a big deal that the Dogon knew about Sirius B before it was ever spotted by a telescope is out the window...they knew it from the anthropologists living with them. However, this does not explain how they knew about Sirius C, which if i remember correctly, was not discovered until 1970's. Also, the article spoke about the Dogons supposed drawings of spaceships and said it was misinterpreted by anthropologists, etc. Thats about all i remember from the article. Anyway, lots of strange stuff connecting the Babylonians, ancient Egyptians and the Dogon.
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N02 VAPORIZER

[SevenStar]

interesting. I'll have to check it out. I know the babylonians have a god that is similar to the depiction of what nommo look like. FWIW, the chinese do as well. His name is fu xi - he was credited with creating the i ching, if I'm not mistaken

[Ninjak]

omg maybe earth has seen the last of its days as a free planet due to newly sighted "scout" ships planning route for the ever strong mother ships to land and unleash a firery chaos upon the earth unless we unite as martial arts brethen and fight back these alien dieties................................sounds cool but

i think you jumped to conclusions man

[mantiskilla]

omg maybe earth has seen the last of its days as a free planet due to newly sighted "scout" ships planning route for the ever strong mother ships to land and unleash a firery chaos upon the earth unless we unite as martial arts brethen and fight back these alien dieties................................sounds cool but

i think you jumped to conclusions man

its too bad, because personally, i welcome the chaos. i'm sick of this sh!t.
________
EXPERT INSURANCE

[David Jamieson]

Not necessarily true. i always thought that humans will never discover time travel bc if it was possible that would mean, like you said, time isn't linear. which is to say that a does not follow b does not follow c. if this were the case we would have already noticed us traveling into points prior to the invention of time travel. if time is not linear than it wouldn't be a question of will we discover time travel the question is have we discovered it. bc since a does not follow b past present and future are not relevent markers. but i resolved with myself that i firmly believe that time IS, in fact, linear. i was born i lived i died and if it goes in any other order than beware bc that wouldme i am an evil dead and zombiegeddon is happening. take cover. anyway the reason i have been able to resolve the linear nature of time and the possibility of time travel is from my limited study of quantum mechanics. a very watered down explanation of one concept in quantum theory is that when an action occurs at that point on the time line every possible outcome occurs. so it is still linear in an infinite number of directions. like a fractal. so if we were to discover time travel tomorrow we will have created a divergent reality and thus a divergent past to travel into. and for the nearly infinite number or realities that created time travel simultaneously there would be just as many that don't. so this means these paradoxical time loops wouldn't happen. or so they tell me.
regards,
~Steve
p.s. sorry if that was a rambling nonsense. i tried to organize my thoughts as best i could. i think i may have failed. lol

everything in nature is of a circular nature travelling in orbital patterns. why shouldn't time be the same way? and who's to say we don't notice the effects?
for instance, things like out of place and out of time objects? what of deep meditation prophecies? what of the nature of the mind itself and how much we don't realize may be true or not true based purely on how we percieve things. You only see the world the way you see it because of the shape of your eyes, if they carried a different shape of lens, it would be a whole different place to you.
and so, over time, the way you grew to understanding more and more would be almost entirely different than how you grow to understand now.

There is more to what there is than what is apparent. That's my point I guess. It IS possible that time is not linear and it is also possible that like the curvature of the earth, we cannot see that it is not a linear path because we have not discovered a way to practically give ourselves a relative perspective on time in the same way we can give ourselevs a relative perspective on our physical surroundings.

Time is of our own invention, but it is a self evident thing as we can measure it. but compared to how much time we can imagine there to be, can we honestly say it doesn't loop like everything else in the universe?

btw mandelbrot staring will mess you up!

[Shaolin Wookie]

The problem is you're imagining things with the limited mind of a man of 2007. Nothing travels faster than light.... that WE know about NOW.

The man of 1790 couldn't imagine affordable air travel for the masses never mind taking a spaceship up to the moon to have a walk and a hit a golf ball.

In a world where anything is possible anything can happen

If I'm thinking of the limited mind of man of 2007, what exactly are you thinking with? That's a baaaaad way to start a retort.

I'm sorry to break it to you guys, but the world and universe at large are just about as boring and defunct on a social level as they are. Quantum Physics is fun to study, but then those new-age hippies get a hold of it and you wind up with that crazy cult (what the Bleep) and every local Yogi and Dancing Chung-Li Master preaching his gospel based on the movements of subatomic particles, Pink Floyd style. Well, particles are particles, and humans are humans--and even the biggest contra-Einstein skeptics agree that as atomic constructions grow in size, they become more ordered to the point that the classical model of hte universe holds true--universally. You're never going to travel in time (any more than the fractions of millionths of seconds that astronauts have already), and you'll never meet an alien species outside of the offspring of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, or the immigrants most Americans blame for wage-labor shortages. MAybe I'm wrong three million years from now, but when I'm playing with my particle accelerator, I'm right today 99.9% of the time. And classically--well, its pretty **** continuous....

And not everything is possible. For instance: It is quite probable that it is entirely impossible to breach any kind of lasting peace between Israeli's and Palestinians. I think we ought to ship the quarreling factions off to the moon to duke it out and see just what they'll inherit--that is, precisely.....dust..... It is quite impossible, with the limited mind of man of 2007 to describe the location and momentum of subatomic particles. I is quite impossible to describe the limitations of the limited mind of man of 2007 while using the limited mind of man of 2007 (Godel, anyone?)

Now, as for interstellar travel: Let's say we travel to another galaxy on our scout ship and sift through the billions upon billions of stars therein, each with its many planets, each with its many moons. It's quite a chore to scan for life....right? That's gonna take awhile. But we've got some kind of overdrive that cuts down our travel time (worm holes or some such other theoretical construct). Still, you're not going to be in hyperdrive all the time. On billionth of an inch to the left and you wind up crashing into Alex, fresh on his journey to protect the Star League from Zur and the Kodan Armada......"G-******!!!" you scream. Or else you wind up crashing into a star, or you get lost in your wormhole and wind up in a black hole, or your hyperdrive malfuntions and you wind up crushed in some pocket universe, in the pocket of another universe.

Lets put that aside for a moment. Now, we've searched entire galaxy, but didn't find anything. We decide to drop back in on HQ to report our findings (or lack thereof). We exit the local galaxy via the Interstate exit ramp (a little trickier than it sounds, because every point in space is the center of the universe), but now all the galaxies look the same from afar. In space there is no up or down, left or right, north, south, east, or west. The galaxy that was previously on your left is now.....well, where the **** is it? The only way to travel in a straight line is to just go with inertia, but then you have to avoid planetary gravitational pulls, and all that space-curviture (which is diffucult to understand at first, but makes perfect sense after a while). How do we get our coordinates if we deviate from a direct line? In space, motion is relative....and in interstellar travel, so are our directions. We might be able to get from A to B, but from A to Z in a single bound? Imagine trying to get to any one star without a stationary HQ to plot the course from. We can get from Earth to the moon, or mars, or pluto, b/c we're not moving (from our point of view). The space ship is just the method of conveyence. And we're pretty much waiting for certain alignments to keep us from having to deviate from our course. But to make this starship the HQ? Hmmm....that's tricky. See, from any one point in space, there are billions of stars, each representing its billions of paths to those billions of stars. The previous star/planet probably looks like any of those other spatial objects. Maybe we use doppler or something to find out which is closest, or which is moving at the proper speed in order to determine which star/planet is the one we need to refer to. But that's a tough chore without the basic reconaissance plotted out in advance from a stationary/planetary HQ. How to plot the course without? It would take longer to compute trajectories than to travel one of them, but if you make a mistake, you're going to die before you make any headway (and you begin to know what it's like to be a photon in a double slit experiment) ...

It's an orienteering nightmare (and probably the reason you won't get out of the galaxy very easily). You have to have two reference points to plot a trajectory. So you send out your beacon to HQ in order to find your coordinates. Unfortunately, all your reference points really look the same. And if you're completely galaxy-less.....well, how exactly do you describe your position in a place with no positions? GPS, yes. UPS (universal-PS), not on your life.

Well, ****. You've gone so far that you're going to have to wait for the goddanged speed of light to convey the information you wish to send out. You send it in every direction, and you just decide to wait, and wait, and wait....

Well, you end up waiting longer than the Christians have waited for the Second Coming. As long as it took for it to send, it takes just that long to get back to you. Instantaneous communication? Not bloody likely.

Okay, now let's imagine something more realistic. We're one of eight planets in orbit around the sun (Pluto's just an ice-block meteor sucked in from the Oort Cloud, so it doesn't count) that hosts life right now. Mars might have once upon a time. But we kicked it out of the club--b/c in order for there to be significant, successful alien life, the environment has to remain relatively stable. Look at the specific atmospheric conditions necessary to host humanoid life. They're very unlikely (1:8 with regards to the sun). Now, there's billions upon billions of stars in our galaxy, most of them bigger than our local star. They'd exert enough pull to draw in far more matter, with the likelihood of far more planets. Let's say 1/20 planets has atmospheric components necessary for life. But what's the likelihood they'll reach the equilibrium ours has. Look at Venus and Mars. A little too far or too close, and you're toast. Or, let's imagine a breed of methane-breathing aliens who can only hear in super ultraviolet frequencies, who share a single species consciousness, and are actually 1/50th the size of the average human.....could they sense our presence, or a planetary presence? Do they even know what's going on around them? Are they anything other than self-aware? Or, can they even be self-aware?

Our view of alien life is so sadly anthropocentric---to the point of absurdity. What's the likelihood that an extraterrestrial brain exists? Slim to none. Everything evolves in reference to its environment. It's why organisms breath oxygen, or plants carbon dioxide. We don't trade the least abundant elements of our atmosphere.........and there aren't any atmospheres like ours anywhere in throwing distance (in interstellar terms, that is).

Size would play an issue here. I can imagine an alien civilization consisting of members 3 billion times the size of humans (or billionsX more) perhaps, on some blue moon (this phrase loses its meaning in this context), making first contact with something (probably an amoeba it stepped on while playing hopscotch galaxy-to-galaxy.

I've never seen a UFO. And neither have you.

There are more schizo's and liars than you could ever believe. Everyone please: PLEASE!!!! Take your meds. We're floating around in a relatively uninhabited universe, unwatched, unloved, unknown, duking it out for control of the local anthill. Ain't no magnifying glass. Ain't no eye behind it.

[Shaolin Wookie]

Did anyone else just hear a toilet flush?

[Royal Dragon]

I've never seen a UFO. And neither have you.

Reply]
Ok, then what was the huge giant charcoal colored rectangle thing I photographed flyning across the Chicago skyline, hmmm?

Last i knew, big tall buildings did not fall over, and float up on thier sides to fly around the city.....