Homestar Runner Wiki Forum

So I turned on the news for a second and the first story they wish to tell me about it a UFO sighting in California. Some guy took a picture of a UFO hovering above a lamp post. Now this isn't your normal UFO a.k.a. Flying Disc, this thing really was a UFO, like no lie. I'm having trouble finding a pic, but when I get one, I'll post it.

It had like a ring, with three prongs coming out of it, and one large flat thingy ma bob sticking out on another side. The man that took the picture, is missing.

My question though, if he is missing, how did they get the picture?

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Hadn't heard that story. Let me know if you find a link. (I can't find anything anywhere.)

What's funny is, last Thursday I sent Strong Bad an e-mail asking him if he's ever seen a UFO before. Wonder if it'll make it into an e-mail toon now?

April Fool's Day isn't for another two weeks, Moo.

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I've seen tons of UFOs. There were things in the sky, and I have no clue what they were, therefore, they were UFOs.

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If you can't fix it with a hammer, you have an electrical problem.

Really? I could easily identify anything I see in the sky.

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They are only considered UFOs if no air traffic control tower in the area can identify them or establish 2-way communication with them.

Or something like that.

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I'm being for serious Lunar Jesty.

And Bob, I wish I could find something! I saw it on Foxnews, but there isn't a single thing about the story anywhere! The reason that I'm wondering about this is because it was above a power pole. The man that took the photograph was standing near a power pole and the UFO was kinda' almost right above it. I'm still working to find the picture.

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Well there's your problem right there.

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Is this the story?

And why is this in R&P?

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Nope, that's not it. This particular incidence was in California.

In my opinion, R&P is also a place to discuss news. Also, Extra Terrestrial talk could be considered religion if it has to be.

Thanks Captain Obvious.

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Wait, I think I just saw this on UFO Hunters like..yesterday or something.

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Is this like a regular show?

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I don't understand what you're asking/needs more input.

Its on History Channel I think... might be TLC...

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Like comes on with new episodes weekly or whatever, I think. Like Mythbusters or something.

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Yeah, it does.

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Yeah, that's what I meant. I don't think that would have been it. Its possible, but an episode about something discovered the day before seems quite unlikely to me.

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Ah, Youfoes. So awesome, yet, not many people believe that they are what they are said to be, and some even believe that we are the only intelligent life in the universe. It disappoints me greatly to hear when people cannot consider other possibilities and discredit all theories with "Boulderdash! That's preposterous!" Not to say that I believe that every picture ever taken of a Youfoe is the real deal, but I believe in the shady dealings regarding the Roswell incident and other such government activities relating to Extraterrestrials. But that's besides the point.

I did see this on UFO Hunters the other night, and I think the connections they made to US aircraft were pretty interesting.

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I think it's exceedingly improbable that we're alone in the universe, considering its sheer size -- but I also think it's very likely that the chance we will ever meet aliens is very slim. For it to be practical, we'd need faster-than-light travel, and there's a pretty good chance that such a thing simply does not exist.

- Kef

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The closest distance between two points WAS a straight line, and thats what you're thinking of here.

Take a piece of paper, draw two dots on it, and fold the paper between both dots. Poke a hole through it, and run a string through it. Now scale it to over 3billion miles, and you just got yourself Wormholes.

We're getting pretty freakin close to understanding wormholes, so why wouldn't a greater intelligence be able to manipulate and use them?

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Two things to say about COLA's idea. Firstly, if there was other life out there, who says it has higher intelligence? Who says it is intelligent at all?
I think there might be other life forms out there, but they are probably more like animals than sentient beings. Of course this comes from a creationist point of view, I think humans are very much distinguished from other animals and God probably wouldn't make other intelligent beings on other planets. Animals are entirely possible though.

Secondly, we are not exactly close to figuring out wormholes. We don't even know if they exist, they are only theoretical, just an idea.
Now, higher dimensions are all but proven by observations with particle physics. During particle collisions, some of the resulting smaller particles are seen as moving into or out of other dimensions to account for their sudden disappearance or appearance.
Also, an electron in an atom can have a pattern where it is sometimes found in two separate places but never at a point between those places. It has been suggested that these points in space might be connected through a higher dimension.

tl;dr: I think aliens are probably not intelligent, and higher dimensions exist, but wormholes probably don't.

Now why didn't I just say that from the start?

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SIBHoD.

There's also the Fermi paradox. The Fermi paradox is basically the idea that it's statistically probable that there are many other civilizations out there, and yet we have no concrete evidence that we're not alone in the universe. In other words, "if they're out there, where are they?" But it's only a problem if you assume that useful faster-than-light travel (be it by wormholes or other means) exists. If not, then the problem is much smaller. (It doesn't go away entirely, though: we would expect to find radio transmissions from other civilizations -- even if we can't actually decode them -- and yet we haven't found anything.) You'd think if space travel were easy enough, somebody would have found us by now... and I don't mean a mysterious UFO that nobody else has seen abducting somebody.

- Kef

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That also backs up my idea that if other life forms are out there, they are probably unintelligent. If so, then this isn't a paradox at all.
They probably don't venture beyond their own planet, so it's up to us to try to find them.

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SIBHoD.

sigh

So, you think that we're the smartest beings in the universe? You think that there is no possibility whatsoever that a different planet's race could have intelligence vastly superior to ours? Now, I think it could go either way. There could be millions of planets containing life out there, and some could be on the same level, some could be ahead, some could be behind. But to say that we're the best, and that others HAVE to be unintelligent, is extremely closed-minded.

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Not arrogance, or closed-mindedness, just my point of view.

I'm willing to consider other points of view, I was just putting it out there.

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SIBHoD.

Oh, right, the "god" argument. you're a creationist, I had no idea.

If you were willing to consider other points of view, I guess that's fine. But there's no way to measure the possibility because we have no indications as to the intelligence, or even existence, of extraterrestrial life.(or so most people think).

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I'm going to use a non-creationist argument here: If there was an alien race with the ability to travel the vast distances between planets and this race has visited Earth, why wouldn't they give us an unequivocal proof of their existence?

Of course, this is assuming alien life forms would be human-like in nature, in that they'd be proud of their accomplishments.

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If you can't fix it with a hammer, you have an electrical problem.

Here's another point of view for you ...

I too believe that God created the universe. Now, I'm not going to get into the whole Creation / Evolution argument here (or even the Young Earth / Old Earth argument), but I do believe that God did it. However, I also believe that God could have created other intelligent life in the universe. (I've spent a good bit of time discussing this point with others, and I'm very comfortable with my position, but that's a topic for another thread.) DID God do that? I don't know, and I may never know.

Now more on topic -- if there IS other intelligent life in the universe, I find it highly unlikely that they would've visited us. Even if FTL travel was discovered by another race, how would they find earth? Maybe they picked up our radio broadcasts? Well, the first radio signals powerful enough to go any distance away from the earth happened maybe 65 years ago. So the only civilizations that could pick up any of our radio traffic would have to be closer than 65 light years from us, a tiny fraction of the universe. And the chances of a civilization with faster-than-light travel within that sphere is pretty slim. First, you'd need a planet. Planets are highly unlikely around binary stars, due to gravitational forces of the system, so it would have to be a single star. That cuts down the number of possible star systems significantly. Then the planet would have to have the perfect conditions to support some form of intelligent life, which includes size, distance from its sun, which affects water, atmosphere, etc. The star itself would have to be an older star, assuming it takes time for the civilization to develop FTL travel, which further narrows down the field.

I could go on, but I've rambled long enough. Are there unidentified things in the sky sometimes? Sure. Is there intelligent life elsewhere in the universe? Could be. Are they related? Very seriously doubt it.

Yeah, you can't really assume things like that. In fact, I think it would be more logical to assume that they have a different mindset than humans, or at least slightly different.



Ever heard of the Voyager Golden Record?

And it's possible for an early civilization to stumble upon FTL travel completely by accident.

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Yes. But if you're expecting it to point extraterrestrials back to earth, consider this:
Voyager 1 is only 0.001665 light years from the earth, according to the official Voyager web page (1 AU is 1.5813 × 10^-5 light years) , and the closest star to our sun is over 4 light years away (some 2,500 times further out), so unless some extraterrestrial is already exploring our "neighborhood" and happens upon this (relatively) tiny little space probe, they wouldn't see the information on the disc.

As far as accidentally stumbling upon faster-than-light travel ... I guess it's possible. Not likely, but possible.

I just think the sheer vastness of space makes physical contact with another intelligent life form improbable. (Intercepting a radio transmission, like what S.E.T.I. is looking for, is somewhat more likely, but still a shot in the dark.)

It would violate the Prime Directive!

(Actually, I think one of the big reasons that Star Trek has the Prime Directive is to explain why we haven't been visited by aliens already...)

Also, I don't really see any particular reason why, from a creationist standpoint, God would create this whole big giant universe and only put sentient life on one of them. Wouldn't it be rather egocentric of us to make that assumption? Sure, other worlds aren't mentioned in the Bible, but perhaps God didn't find any particular need to mention them, not to mention that people back then probably didn't comprehend the idea of life on other planets the way we comprehend it. After all, basic astronomy wasn't even understood back then.

- Kef

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