Why havent aliens landed yet on earth?

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Earth is probably the definition of fly-over country.

over-zealous religious warlike greedy uncivilized low technology and will kill and dissect you just like ringing a bell?

Yeah I'd wanna go to Earf too...

only thing I'd be looking for on earth was trouble and maybe some tasty human spinal fluid. I'm sure space hoes are like....1000X better than earth ones.
 
Posting my response to a very similar question from the UFO thread:

Jado said:
Nothing is stopping them. They likely just don't want to. Physicist James McDoland said extraterrestrials were real after conducting his own research and field studies across several continents, and that it was his belief the aliens were studying humanity with a loosely hands-off approach. Meaning, they weren't landing in the middle of Times Square and asking for permission. They just do it at leisure, coming and going as they please, monitoring Air Force bases, planes, naval ships and submarines (many UFOs have been spotted near or below the water), hovering over nuclear power plants, silos, etc.

That, he said, was the most likely reason for the deep secrecy among certain military and intelligence circles; that no one has control over what happens over our airspace and extraterrestrials' activities. This makes sense to me -- a big fuss is made about a foreign nation's plane coming within hundreds of miles of X border/base/ship, so it kinda destroys that culture of security and trust in our governments and leaders when these unknown beings go wherever they want, do whatever they want, and we have no say or manner of stopping them.
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Great thread in general:
The All-Purpose UFO Discussion Thread
 
should i create a new thread with the question:

How would the world react if an extra-terrestrial being/ship appeared on a live T.V. broadcast?

Would people be in denial? how would science/ideology/culture/religion change?

this question always interested me.
 
It's a big universe. We're on one of the smaller planets revolving a medium-small unremarkable star, in an unremarkable stellar cluster, in one galaxy of hundreds of billions. Just finding us would be quite a task. And even if intelligent life forms have interstellar travel out there, who is to say they are in our galaxy, and not the hundreds of billions of others? Maybe they can travel throughout their own galaxy, but the distances between galaxies are still too great.

Even the Forerunners never strayed far from the Milky Way.
 
LordOfChaos said:
It's a big universe. We're on one of the smaller planets revolving a medium-small unremarkable star, in an unremarkable stellar cluster, in one galaxy of hundreds of billions. Just finding us would be quite a task. And even if intelligent life forms have interstellar travel out there, who is to say they are in our galaxy, and not the hundreds of billions of others? Maybe they can travel throughout their own galaxy, but the distances between galaxies are still too great.

Even the Forerunners never strayed far from the Milky Way.
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Point is, there has been more than enough time to send probes across our galaxy. There was a study published that it could be done in 10 millions years at like 10% the speed of light. The Milky Way galaxy is 13 billion years old, now obviously not all that time was habitable, but still, you get the point.

Either they're come and gone, are here and we can't detect them, or they just never did exist. That or the great filter gets em all.

I still stick by you don't see things just once in the universe, but the lack of evidence is telling.
 
ced said:
Point is, there has been more than enough time to send probes across our galaxy. There was a study published that it could be done in 10 millions years at like 10% the speed of light. The Milky Way galaxy is 13 billion years old, now obviously not all that time was habitable, but still, you get the point.

Either they're come and gone, are here and we can't detect them, or they just never did exist. That or the great filter gets em all.

I still stick by you don't see things just once in the universe, but the lack of evidence is telling.
Click to expand...

There's just so much flawed with this. Even within just our galaxy, you know we've only been a species for less than a quarter of a million years, if probes came by in the last 10 million, they would still be unlikely to pick us up as a technological civilization. AND, it's also assuming that if intelligent civilizations are in our galaxy, they'd be interested and have the resources to send out mass probes within the last ten million years. Are we doing that? No, we just have a handful, and we've only just breached the edge of the solar system. And what civilization would take on 10 million year projects? You're being deliberately overselective of "intelligence", we're intelligent, our projects barely span a human lifetime at most. Besides that, even if they did take on this 10 million year long project, what if it was 20 million years ago? Etc etc.

And this sidesteps my point about other galaxies anyways.
 
ced said:
Point is, there has been more than enough time to send probes across our galaxy. There was a study published that it could be done in 10 millions years at like 10% the speed of light. The Milky Way galaxy is 13 billion years old, now obviously not all that time was habitable, but still, you get the point.

Either they're come and gone, are here and we can't detect them, or they just never did exist. That or the great filter gets em all.

I still stick by you don't see things just once in the universe, but the lack of evidence is telling.
Click to expand...

Assuming there is on average more than 1 intelligent, tech capable race per galaxy. I can easily see that not being the case. Once that number drops to 1 or below then that means you need to look at other galaxies to find advanced intelligences and those distances may be insurmountable at relativistic speeds.
 
A species capable of visiting us from across the galaxy, would by the same token, have literally no reason to give a fuck about us. We're tiny idiots to them, and essentially nothing we have here is remotely relevant in terms of 'sustenance'. That's why 'they want our water' plots are so immensely stupid, and for all we know their biology is totally incompatible with ours. There's really not much interest another alien species could possibly have with us, besides some sort of academic one.
 
ced said:
Point is, there has been more than enough time to send probes across our galaxy. There was a study published that it could be done in 10 millions years at like 10% the speed of light. The Milky Way galaxy is 13 billion years old, now obviously not all that time was habitable, but still, you get the point.

Either they're come and gone, are here and we can't detect them, or they just never did exist. That or the great filter gets em all.

I still stick by you don't see things just once in the universe, but the lack of evidence is telling.
Click to expand...

I often wonder if within a million years humanity will have succeeded in colonizing a good portion (or all) of the milky way, but to think that this is possible brings into question the existence of other advance civilizations. (who obviously haven't done it yet)

Personally given that, I'll prefer if either we are the first or the only intelligent species in the galaxy, because otherwise statistically speaking the future is not bright for our kind
 
There are two scenarios...

Scenario 1: they do visit our Earth
Scenario 2: they don't visit our Earth

If scenario 1 is true, there can be multiple reasons why we don't know about these visits:

- They are simply observing / studying, much like we (humans) study and observe animals and they feel no need to contact us (humans)
- They are observing/studying and have had select contact with humans (e.g. maybe high-placed government officals)
- There can be moral reasons not to contact us (for example, they don't want any contact with a species that still 'does' war)
- They have some 'prime directive' (yes, like in Star Trek) to not interfere in a species' development or something like that

If scenario 2 is true, there also can be multiple reasons:

- Aliens do not exist. We're all alone in this gigantic universe.
- Aliens do exist, but they are not intelligent enough (yet) to do advances space travel (e.g. like us humans: we can go to the moon, maybe to Mars in the next decade or so - but traveling to another solar system is still impossible for us)
- Aliens do exist, are intelligent enough for advanced space travel, but haven't discovered us yet
 
akira28 said:
Earth is probably the definition of fly-over country.

over-zealous religious warlike greedy uncivilized low technology and will kill and dissect you just like ringing a bell?

Yeah I'd wanna go to Earf too...

only thing I'd be looking for on earth was trouble and maybe some tasty human spinal fluid. I'm sure space hoes are like....1000X better than earth ones.
Click to expand...

They got more holes, Man!
 
What if aliens don't exist?

Or maybe they're on the other side of the universe (for all intents and purposes), making contact virtually impossible.
 
QuickSilverD said:
I often wonder if within a million years humanity will have succeeded in colonizing a good portion (or all) of the milky way, but to think that this is possible brings into question the existence of other advance civilizations. (who obviously haven't done it yet)
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That's something we simply don't know. Maybe there are other, advanced species out there and colonizing other planets like you suggest. But that's something that could be the case millions of light years away, or even in a solar system nearby ours.

If colonization is taking place somewhere in the galaxy, or even 'right next door', it's almost impossible for us to detect with our current technology. Heck, when we take the fifty closest solar systems to ours, we know that at least four of them have a total of 8 planets. Of the 42 remaining, we suspect that there are three solar systems with at least one planet. Suspect. We aren't even certain yet, even though they are relatively nearby.

Our technology has simply not advanced enough yet.
 
They also have Space Republicans who squandered their space exploration programs to fight Xenucare.
 
LordOfChaos said:
There's just so much flawed with this. Even within just our galaxy, you know we've only been a species for less than a quarter of a million years, if probes came by in the last 10 million, they would still be unlikely to pick us up as a technological civilization. AND, it's also assuming that if intelligent civilizations are in our galaxy, they'd be interested and have the resources to send out mass probes within the last ten million years. Are we doing that? No, we just have a handful, and we've only just breached the edge of the solar system. And what civilization would take on 10 million year projects? You're being deliberately overselective of "intelligence", we're intelligent, our projects barely span a human lifetime at most. Besides that, even if they did take on this 10 million year long project, what if it was 20 million years ago? Etc etc.

And this sidesteps my point about other galaxies anyways.
Click to expand...

Thank you. And, again, the distances involved, in all directions, are incomprehensible. The immensity of that type of project makes it basically impossible. Ideas are easy. Implementing them is hard. "Oh, they're advanced, they can make self-replicating probes" is born of complete ignorance. So is the Fermi Paradox. Colonizing other planets is only possible if you have one of two things:

1. a way to travel between stars without aging (faster than light travel, cryogenic storage, or matter/energy conversion, all science fiction staples that may be impossible in reality).

or

2. a self-contained, life sustaining ship - which is also probably impossible without the energy of a nearby star to utilize (which means it really isn't self-contained). And if you could build such a thing, why travel thousands or millions of generations away?

We assume aliens would be able to do things that we find impossible, simply because they're older. Well, we can't even do many things that science fiction imagined 50 or 100 years ago, despite amazing advances in technology. Our myths and legends going back thousands of years have powers that we can't aspire to in any foreseeable future, but we mindlessly hold aliens to that standard of world-altering, star-destroying power.

Technological advancement isn't an exponential gain. Over the long term, it's likely not even a straight linear gain. The fact that we have no proof of alien life is better proof of that than it is of the non-existence of alien life.
 
What if there's is a type of alien out there that is just a massive entity floating around space. Like a space whale or something.
 
ayyy but they have
BzUq7RyCUAAqPrF.jpg
 
Honestly, the Earth is so unbelievably far from any other planets that have the potential of having life, that it will probably never happen.

I'm sure somewhere out there, there are planets with life, but we'll never see them in our lifetime.
 
-x.Red.x- said:
should i create a new thread with the question:

How would the world react if an extra-terrestrial being/ship appeared on a live T.V. broadcast?

Would people be in denial? how would science/ideology/culture/religion change?

this question always interested me.
Click to expand...

I'd love for that to happen...
 
MagnitudePopPop said:
Just read an interesting article on iO9 asking this very question, with a theory that the cosmos had regular extinction events until relatively recently, so we could be one of many societies emerging at roughly the same time.
Click to expand...

There's some (regurgitation of) interesting bits in there, but the bulk of the intelligent parts are questioning the article's proposal rather than the possible existence of life elsewhere.

Even the title is awful: "Is it time to accept that we're alone in the universe?". It's the modern equivalent of "We're the center of the universe".

This question is surrounded by such ridiculous human drama.

The "Great Silence", wherein we assume that our tiny blip of time observing the universe is enough to conclude that there's no evidence of life.

The Fermi "Paradox", wherein we assume that alien life must possess godlike power, because we're destined to do so, and that the lack of said godlike power being on blatant display is somehow perplexing.

The "Great Filter", wherein we assume we know enough about the development of life from the one example we have to determine its course everywhere in the universe.

And, of course, the always ironic detailing of the improbability of life, intelligent life, and technological civilization, as if those odds don't wither to nothing next to the immensity of even one galaxy, let alone billions of them.

It's like a lottery winner arguing that it's impossible to win the lottery...for anyone else to win, that is.
 
My theory and maybe its been brought up before here or elsewhere is that advanced intelligent life may have no reason to travel to our solar system let alone land on Earth to gather information.

It's already been proven on Earth that as people/countries become more developed, birth rates decline. I can see a future where there is no need to travel or colonize other planets because we simply don't need the space. The only counter to this would be if we eliminated death or vastly increased life expectancy. Also with advanced enough technology, travel may not be needed to learn all we need to at any distance.
 
-x.Red.x- said:
should i create a new thread with the question:

How would the world react if an extra-terrestrial being/ship appeared on a live T.V. broadcast?

Would people be in denial? how would science/ideology/culture/religion change?

this question always interested me.
Click to expand...
Sure. I think it's an interesting question worth discussing
 
LordOfChaos said:
There's just so much flawed with this. Even within just our galaxy, you know we've only been a species for less than a quarter of a million years, if probes came by in the last 10 million, they would still be unlikely to pick us up as a technological civilization. AND, it's also assuming that if intelligent civilizations are in our galaxy, they'd be interested and have the resources to send out mass probes within the last ten million years. Are we doing that? No, we just have a handful, and we've only just breached the edge of the solar system. And what civilization would take on 10 million year projects? You're being deliberately overselective of "intelligence", we're intelligent, our projects barely span a human lifetime at most. Besides that, even if they did take on this 10 million year long project, what if it was 20 million years ago? Etc etc.

And this sidesteps my point about other galaxies anyways.
Click to expand...

That basically falls into the "they've come and gone" theory, which when you think about it, its much more likely than any aliens actually showing up within the timespan of human presence here on Earth. The Earth has been around for 4.5 billion years. There are undoubtedly stars and planets that are billions of years older, and we really don't know if the billions of years it took Earth to develop complex life is an absolute for the universe. If some civilization did go out exploring way earlier, and came here at all, it's much more likely they came and went a long-ass time ago.

Leondexter said:
Thank you. And, again, the distances involved, in all directions, are incomprehensible. The immensity of that type of project makes it basically impossible. Ideas are easy. Implementing them is hard. "Oh, they're advanced, they can make self-replicating probes" is born of complete ignorance. So is the Fermi Paradox. Colonizing other planets is only possible if you have one of two things:

1. a way to travel between stars without aging (faster than light travel, cryogenic storage, or matter/energy conversion, all science fiction staples that may be impossible in reality).

or

2. a self-contained, life sustaining ship - which is also probably impossible without the energy of a nearby star to utilize (which means it really isn't self-contained). And if you could build such a thing, why travel thousands or millions of generations away?

We assume aliens would be able to do things that we find impossible, simply because they're older. Well, we can't even do many things that science fiction imagined 50 or 100 years ago, despite amazing advances in technology. Our myths and legends going back thousands of years have powers that we can't aspire to in any foreseeable future, but we mindlessly hold aliens to that standard of world-altering, star-destroying power.

Technological advancement isn't an exponential gain. Over the long term, it's likely not even a straight linear gain. The fact that we have no proof of alien life is better proof of that than it is of the non-existence of alien life.
Click to expand...

This assumes alien life is bound by the exact same biological rules Earth life is. We really have no way to know how long life on another planet might live or really what kind of biological processes they might go through. They could very well just not give a shit and spend millions of years traveling. You can't strictly apply human limitations here, at least not biological ones. The only thing we can assume about alien life is that it's bound to the same mathematics and physics we are, but we have no way to know how how it could evolve to meet those rules.

bonesmccoy said:
The idea that there *must* more advanced life is really just a secular re-jig on one version of the idea of a supreme being. There's as much a chance that we're #1 as there is we're #33123 on the 'Most Advanced Civ' list.

Imagine one day we do find hard evidence of alien life. But rather than being super cool advanced aliens, they're super dumb neanderthal aliens that are tens of thousands of years behind us on the evolutionary arc.

That would be such a buzz kill.
Click to expand...

If for whatever reason humans ever are able to achieve interstellar travel I imagine the first life we run into out there will be microscopic or possibly animal (or something roughly similar to Earth's animal kingdom). I base this off nothing, but I wouldn't be surprised if we then ran into the ruins of intelligent civilizations before any living civilization.
 
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