"But the distances between solar systems are so great that the chances we’ve been visited by aliens is low, and I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us. Really!"
I'm reading "Aliens are ‘real,’ Obama says, as Washington shrugs/The former president appeared to confirm decades-old conspiracy theories, but then he walked back his podcast comments" (WaPo).
And so I feel vindicated in putting "Obama and the aliens" on yesterday's "5 things I've been finding unbloggable."
I'm blogging it now because the new news confirms the unbloggability of the original story, which was that Obama had said “They’re real, but I haven’t seen them." That sounded, to some people, as though he might have information that we don't have. But he didn't. He was just doing that utterly banal thing of deducing that there must be aliens because the universe is so darned huge. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I'm not impressed by that reasoning: "I don’t even believe there are aliens out there anywhere."
I'm blogging it now because the new news confirms the unbloggability of the original story, which was that Obama had said “They’re real, but I haven’t seen them." That sounded, to some people, as though he might have information that we don't have. But he didn't. He was just doing that utterly banal thing of deducing that there must be aliens because the universe is so darned huge. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I'm not impressed by that reasoning: "I don’t even believe there are aliens out there anywhere."
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194 comments:
They got to him.
The aliens told him to say that.
No one is an illegal alien on stolen planets.
Sort of like The Big Bang is real and not just a theory. Or Anthropomorphic Catastrophic Global Warming is real and not just a theory.
But I rather enjoy the fun and go along with Bob Boyd.
Undocumented visitors from another planet.
Yeah - that face says "Alien Anal probe"
Greys are from zeta reticula
I used to say I was waiting for a really good photograph of one before I’d believe in them. Now with AI, a believable alien is going to have to knock on my door.
If you watch Richard Feynman's video on why aliens have never been to or on earth, then you will know why they have never been seen.
Obama knew what he was doing with his first comment. He’s a liberal with a Harvard law degree and therefore smarter than all of us.
He knew this comment would attract all sorts of attention to himself. You see he’s jealous about how Trump dominates the news in a way that he - the Light Bringer - never could do even with an adoring media.
Like I wrote earlier, he’s a fucking prick and needs to leave us alone. He’s made his money. He has his fancy ocean front mansions. Just go away and let AOC lead the party.
Trump knows all of this. The conventional wisdom was that Trump decided to run when Obama mocked him at that big DC event.
Now watch while Trump frees 93 million people in Iran. Obama propped up the mullahs.
I can’t write it enough times: Obama is a fucking prick.
This is so irresponsible that it must be politically motivated. Obama knows that confirmation of alien life will lead to significant financial instability and market volatility.
"They're real, but I haven't seen them. They're not being kept...blah, blah, blah"
That answer is so typical of politician Obama trying to have it both ways, trying to sound smart and in the know and imminently reasonable, but also cool and a little radical. It was Obama letting his audience project their own opinions onto him. He answers almost everything that way.
There is too much information out there about unexplainable flying objects being regularly encountered by military pilots.
Something very odd is happening.
They're real and they're spectacular.
Oh, really? I would say that it has served its purpose handily: Getting Obama back in the spotlight so that he can increase his influence on the mid-term elections. Quick: Somebody do a google search on frequency of stories on Obama. He's campaigning again. He has a legacy to prop up, and he's been given his orders.
Hey - is that nice, classical Presidential Center opened in Chicago yet? It's only been 10 years.
baghdadbob stole my ray-gun 👆🏽
No follow up, so whats your favorite waffle
“The conventional wisdom was that Trump decided to run when Obama mocked him at that big DC event.”
Trump was running for 2012, that’s when he decided to drop out, although the cause was the combination of the DC event and Operation Neptune Spear.
Ignoring Obama because the space travel topic is largely unrelated to him...if we do interact with aliens I suspect it'll be akin to the Carl Sagan novel and film "Contact" (1985; 1997).
"Contact" proposes a sort of long-distance information exchange -- effectively space TV -- rather than traveling to any remote location. Boring and deflating, but more plausible than executing multi-generation, planet-like-space-ship, high-risk space voyages.
For an egghead's view of what alien interaction might actually be like, and a bleak perspective on meeting "the creator" directly, read Olaf Stapledon's novel "Star Maker" (1937). Star Maker was clearly the inspiration for Forbidden Planet (1957), Star Trek, and 10,000 later sci fi plots.
Trump wants Greenland because Musk has convinced him the spaceships that brought life to earth are buried under the ice.
The Alien haven't been here because we are barely bloggable... but we are definitely not pod-castable.
What did Obama actually DO other than the disaster that is Obamacare?
His third term with Joe Biden was the worst ever Presidency.
Compare and contrast with the first year of Trump 2.0.
We can’t hate Obama enough.
Remember what it looks like, when Obama is campaigning? Same Vibe
Darwin tried explaining it
Darwin did the best he could
Evolution, pretty theory
But how could Darwin know?
That aliens came and fucked the monkey
They fucked the monkey
Aliens came and fucked the monkey
They fucked the monkey
How explain fax machines?
How else explain computer enhancement?
How else explain fiber optics?
How else explain Mozart?
We do not belong here
This planet was a terrarium
Intergalactic broken home
Have to go outer space
And one day find our Daddy
How else explain pay at the pump?
How else explain limited access freeways?
How else explain digital remastering?
Plastic flowers, linoleum, beefalo, Michael Jordan?
Religion?
Astronomy?
Astrology
That looks to the stars
We do not belong here
This planet was a terrarium
Seven billion bastards
Screaming for our Daddy
Aliens came and fucked the monkey
They fucked the monkey
Aliens came and fucked the monkey
They fucked the monkey
Aliens came and fucked the monkey
They fucked the monkey
- Dan Bern, No Missing Link
The out there, but never here theory makes perfect sense to me within our current understanding of physics, but that means a lot of people have a lot of explaining to do. They have some really believable stories. It's much more mysterious without the aliens explanation.
Then again the aliens may be magicians, and that changes everything.
Keep the old boomer hope alive, ann... lol
As far as I know, no other President even said this much about it. Why has no other come out and settled this question for the public so far. If you became President and you never asked for the truth on it, then that President would have to be an alien himself.
And never forget that Obama said he wanted to “transform America” and he and Biden proceeded to do it.
Fucking prick.
It's not possible to extrapolate the existence of intelligent life elsewhere off a single data point. It doesn't matter how large the universe is.
I don't see any reason to describe what Obama said as walking back anything. What he said was true and what most people think--given the size of the universe, it is statistically unlikely that earth is the only planet where life arose. But we have no actual evidence of life anywhere but on earth.
I mean, if you are any sort of Christian or Jew you already believe in aliens, of a sort.
Where, exactly, do angels live? They aren't here 24-7, so they must be somewhere else most of the time. When people die they go to heaven or hell, right? Where are they? The beings that Ezekiel or John the Revelator saw--where are they when they aren't here on Earth?
Most Christians believe in a resurrection. Where are all the Resurrected people, right now? Off planet, so technically aliens. Right?
Sure, not the usual "The grays!" but I believe it fits the definition of intelligent life on another world.
“He was just doing that utterly banal thing of deducing that there must be aliens because the universe is so darned huge.”
You expected more than banality from Obama?
“As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I'm not impressed by that reasoning: "I don’t even believe there are aliens out there anywhere."
That’s not reasoning at all.
I was at a Starbucks the other day and two Aliens walked in. They saw me and they left.... They said, 'We can't, we can't do this.' And they looked in my face and they said, 'We can't do this,' and they left.
@Althouse, so was Obama just bullshitting then? Or is he bullshitting now to shift the spotlight away? Only the gullible know for certain.
So Obama made a false and misleading statement, knowing it to be false and misleading and knowing it would be taken as true by the public? Sounds like his entire campaign strategy.
It is a fact universally acknowledged that all pricks are fucking pricks.
What he said was true and what most people think--given the size of the universe, it is statistically unlikely that earth is the only planet where life arose.
It is not enough to consider just the size of the universe, you must also consider the time. If life arose elsewhere, it is statistically unlikely that it did so just as humanity arose.
They're real...and they're spectacular. h/t Seinfeld.
whats your favorite waffle
"I'll bet you didn't know, the waffle iron was reverse engineered from breakfast technology found in a crashed alien food truck. That's right. And I bet none of you are particularly surprised to hear me say that, are you?"
- Barack Obama speaking at a Waffle House event held to reach out to working class whites in 2008 and since scrubbed from the internet.
"Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there’s life out there."
I'm so sick of this stupid canard. "Statistically" there is a numerator and a detonator. Just because the numerator is very large does not mean that the denominator is not even bigger. The size of the universe standing alone says *nothing* (literally nothing at all) if you don't know the probability of life spontaneously arising.
And for that, we actually do have some arithmetic and statistics to work with: The odds of a simple 500 basepair sequence spontaneously aligning to create a simple genetic code (even just 500 basepairs) is 10^−301. There are "only" 10^80 *atoms* in the whole universe. Atoms. We are working with astronomically remote probabilities here.
Obama needs to shut up.
*denominator
What about Uranus.
@bagoh20: Then again the aliens may be magicians, and that changes everything.
That's often how sci fi authors treat the technology gaps between species. Humans are magicians relative to the evolved natual defenses of animals. Guns bring long-distance sudden death akin to a lightning bolt from Zeus. Consider how Bison stand in circles to defend against wolf attacks, as human rifle magic wiped them out easily. Consider how ducks are easily fooled into landing into shotgun fire per sets of decoys and duck call sounds.
See Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five" (1969) for humans ending up in an alien zoo exhibit.
See Babylon 5 (1993 - 1997) for the "Techno-Mages."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylon_5
"I don’t even believe there are aliens out there anywhere."
Things Althouse would say to trick the Aliens into coming out of the shadows.
Cappy 8:57 wins the thread.
"We are working with astronomically remote probabilities here."
Yet here we are.
I think.
If there are aliens we're never going to see them, precisely because "the universe is so vast". Its 4 light years to Alpha centari the nearest solar system. The fastest man-made object ever - a space probe - went 450,000 miles/hour.
If you made a spacecraft that went 60x faster. Approximately 30 million per hour. Fast enough to get to the Sun in 3 hours.
It would still take you 80+ years to get to Alpha Centuri. And to get to the other solar systems would be 6-8 light years or 120-160 years at 30 million miles/hour.
Compare and contrast the design of Obama’s library with Trump’s ballroom.
I fully support the building of Trump’s Arch. Why? Because it signifies the success and dominance of Western Civilization over the backwards and Stone Age cultures of the Incas, Native Americans, Aztecs and Africans. And throw in the head choppers in the Middle East.
Obama is, at heart, a Third Worlder who grifted and guilted his way to POTUS.
One of the absurdities of star trek is not only does the USS Enterprise go the speed of light - 186000 miles/second, it goes 9x the speed of light (Warp 9). No one has explained how this is possible, but you need it to make the show work. Otherwise Captain Picard/Kirk/etc. would be taking years to get from one solar system to the next.
Theres the alcubierre drive that could work
Aliens Schmaliens.
The universe is composed of approximately 68% dark energy, 27% dark matter, and less than 5% normal matter (stars, planets, gas). Together, dark energy and dark matter make up roughly 95% of the total mass-energy content of the cosmos.
Dark matter and dark energy are invisible, unknown components that dominate the universe, making up roughly 95% of its total content. Dark matter acts as an invisible, attractive "glue" holding galaxies together, while dark energy is a repulsive force driving the accelerated expansion of the universe.
"I don’t even believe there are aliens out there anywhere."
(Heavy sigh)
Shit.
Althouse is CIA.
we will KNOW, if/when aliens travel to earth..
They will have books with them with titles like: To Serve Humans.
Best Case Scenario: they DON'T eat us, they just enslave us.
Most Likely Scenario: they Just remove us.
Seriously, if you are a underdeveloped people..
The BEST you can hope for is Slavery
95% of Cosmology is a Fudge Factor. If that doesn't blow your hair back, check if you have a pulse
Warp drive warps space around you the ship doesnt move
Obozo certainly gets into many MAGA heads and lives rent free. There's hope, Trump is going to rebuild our insane asylum complex for those with ODS
If I was God, I'd do the same thing. I'd put life on planets so far apart they could never find out about each other. That's how you stay out of trouble with mistresses, and God is all knowing, so I'm sure he's heard about this life hack.
If aliens arrived on earth they most likely would take the form of a Lightworker with a Wookiee for a wife.
Althouse: "I don’t even believe there are aliens out there anywhere."
Obama: "Don't boo. Vote."
Get out the vote just went off-world.
He said it as a statement of fact not an opinion 'it could be true'
"Dark matter and dark energy are invisible, unknown components that dominate the universe, making up roughly 95% of its total content."
Or maybe dark energy/dark matter doesn't really exist. It's just made up bullshit necessary to get our equations to balance.
I can see why Obama has sympathy for space aliens, given his rather odd background. Son of kenyan father (who skipped out) and mother named "Stanley", who grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia with a Islamic step father. Obama must have felt like a space alien when he arrived in Los angeles to go to college.
I used to say I was waiting for a really good photograph of one before I’d believe in them. Now with AI, a believable alien is going to have to knock on my door.
It would be one of Musk's tesla robots. Too lifelike for you to tell.
Warp drive warps space around you the ship doesnt move
Yeah that makes sense. I did that yesterday. A piece of cake.
Thats how an alcubierre drive would work theoretically
"The odds of a simple 500 basepair sequence spontaneously aligning to create a simple genetic code (even just 500 basepairs) is 10^−301"
But for a randomly assembled 50mer it's about 10^-30, and there are catalytic RNAs that are in that size range. At a certain point random assembly falls by the wayside and self-replicating systems begin to dominate. Still pretty unlikely, though. I think it is a much larger driver of the Fermi "paradox" than most people realize.
I wonder if the IRS would accept my explanation about having a lot of "dark expenses" that make everything balance out.
@D.D. Driver: Or maybe dark energy/dark matter doesn't really exist.
Or, it's just residue from the early universe that reads today with different gravitational properties and nothing remarkable at all. Regarding aliens, having just 5% "regular matter" would not matter for any alien thesis. There are still billions and billions and billions of potential places to live out there.
Or, the universe outside our reach is just a Muskian simulation.
1+4=100
hmmm, my math doesn't seem to work..
Let me add in a fudge.. I'll call it dark matter (because fudge is dark?)
1+4+27=100
hmmm, my math STILL doesn't seem to work..
Oh! wait a minute! i'll JUST add in ANOTHER fudge!
1+4+27+68=100
That did it! PHYSICS IS FUN!!!
Vance said:
"I mean, if you are any sort of Christian or Jew you already believe in aliens, of a sort.
Where, exactly, do angels live? They aren't here 24-7, so they must be somewhere else most of the time. When people die they go to heaven or hell, right? Where are they? The beings that Ezekiel or John the Revelator saw--where are they when they aren't here on Earth?
Most Christians believe in a resurrection. Where are all the Resurrected people, right now? Off planet, so technically aliens. Right?"
I think of angels and those living in the life ever after as existing here but in a different state or dimension that most of us can not see. Once in a while there are people who can experience or are more aware of that dimension or state - people who see the Marian apparitions or who have divine mystical experiences of seeing Christ or saints.
tommyesq said...
"What he said was true and what most people think--given the size of the universe, it is statistically unlikely that earth is the only planet where life arose."
It is not enough to consider just the size of the universe, you must also consider the time. If life arose elsewhere, it is statistically unlikely that it did so just as humanity arose.
You have no idea if that's true or not, but also, so what if it is? Where did the requirement come from that it has to have arisen at the same time as humans? (I suspect you are quietly adding another unnecessary requirement--that it be technologically advanced life.)
and IF you think that my Physics Theories are Fun..
Just WAIT Until i show you my Climate Change Models!
They're ACCURATE! (if you redefine Accuracy)
Here's some REAL Phyical Knowledge:
Reality isn't stranger than you imagine..
Reality is stranger than you CAN imagine
The purpose of physics isn't to explain, it's to manufacture bigger and better stuff (that is, BOMBS)
Dave Begley. 8:27
I’m with you, Dave
We all saw weird science
"it is statistically unlikely that earth is the only planet where life arose."
We don't know what odds were overcome by the rise of single-celled organisms on Earth and are, thus, in no position to calculate odds of it happening anywhere else.
Theres the drake equation fwiw
The word “life” in this discussion is doing some heavy lifting. Yes, finding life on another rock in space would be an amazing discovery. However, it would be much more likely to be microbial life. Who knows, maybe Cappy is right and we end up finding it in the crust of Uranus
It’s no fun divorcing a compulsive liar. My tip: demand evidence to back up everything they say.
@Bushman of the Kohlrabi: Who knows, maybe Cappy is right and we end up finding it in the crust of Uranus
A joke told me me a long, long time ago, in a place far, far away:
"What circles your anus and hunts down cling-ons?"
"A washcloth"
0bama is an alien from the planet Jugearz.
Change my mind.
For most of the history of life on Earth it was only single-celled. The big jump, the long odds are it getting from there to intelligent life, or even dumb life that's multicellular, with differentiated tissues and organs.
But could intelligence arise without biology, maybe some confluence of factors that transforms directly from unorganized to organized energy alone.
I would like to have heard Jesse Jackson's answer to the question.
You got to hand it to God. The dude has patience.
Later in the interview, Obama was talking about the homeless in LA and he almost said "homeless," remembered that leftists decreed they be called "unhoused," but stumbled and called them "the houseless."
Listening to one of the world's most powerful men straining to obey the edicts of his voter base was momentarily fascinating.
D.D.D.,
> Obama needs to shut up
That is statistically less likely than encountering alien life.
I have no strong opinion either way, but acknowledge Bryson's observation that while life may want to be, it just doesn't want to be much.
Intelligent life is apparently rare, but some form of slime or muck wouldn't surprise me.
Overheard at a recent Antifa drum circle:
"People around here have long abused Uranus,
and I'm not talking about the planet."
He's obviously just trying to distract people from the fact that he is an alien. "Look! Over there! A red herring!"
Obama is trying to dispel the gay rumors by replacing them with alien probe rumors. CC, JSM
You have all these theories of how warp drive is possible. But to work it would need an immense and unrealistic amount of energy. In any case, we cant create a spaceship that will go to MARS in 30 minutes. Thats about 1/10 the speed of light. When we do, wake me up.
Or maybe we can ask some space aliens what they used.
It depends if an alcubierre drive is feasible
You cant just go to mars direct
Lizard face on, lizard face off.
I like the idea of Barack Obama being Nancy Reaganed but apparently he’s less keen on the idea…
"Anyway, here's Obama, getting people who are not me excited and then making it clear that he was just bullshitting in the universe-huge-must-be-aliens-somewhere way that just about everyone else does..."
But not everyone, and the huge-universe-must-contain-aliens-somewhere speculation is becoming less and less credible, and not just for aliens with spaceships and butt-probes, but extraterrestrial life in general.
The whole SETI raison d'être flows from an unprovable assumption about infinite space, that it must contain infinite possibilities. The evidence that we have argues against it. The James Webb Telescope has looked further than 13 billions light-years, and has seen nothing to suggest the universal laws of nature are significantly different from our local ordinances -- no matter how distant in time or space, magic doesn't hold sway. How life arises from non-life is unknown, or even if. We assume it happened at least once, here on this planet we call Earth, but we have no evidence to cite, or even a theoretical scenario for that occurrence that doesn't rely on hand-waving. Consequently, there's no reason to assume there's life anywhere else but here.
The known laws of biology give us no assurance that extraterrestrial life exists in any form, let alone intelligent life. The natural history of life as we know it doesn't explain ourselves. Some of us believe that given sufficient time human-like intelligence just happens. It happened once, here on this planet, somewhere on the continent of Africa -- maybe. But we have no mechanism to explain it. Consider the great apes. They aren't our ancestors. They're our cousins -- descendants of a distant ancestor we share. We have Shakespeare and Elon Musk. They have Zippy the Chimp and Professor Bobo. Go back far enough in the natural history of primates, and the difference between an ape ancestor and a human ancestor is much more pronounced in the pelvic girdle than the brain cavity. The apes have had more time to evolve into rocket scientists than we have, and yet they haven't even gotten to page 1, paragraph 2 in the handbook of rock science: If you find a rock that cracks the nuts efficiently, keep it. Therefore, elapsed time isn't necessarily an ingredient in the secret sauce of intelligent life, and that applies cosmically, not just locally.
13.8 billion years, that's the current estimate of the age of the universe based on the cosmic microwave background radiation, the leftover heat of the Big Bang. That's a long time, 13.8 billion years, isn't it? Well, it's not. It's a tiny fraction, a minuscule instant, in the lifetime of the universe. People who are anxious to tell you about their abduction by UFO pilots think we're late to the party, that the aliens have already eaten the caviar and drunk the Rémy Martin, leaving us nothing but Cheez Whiz on saltines and some dregs of Fleischmann's gin. Well, they're mistaken. We Earthlings are early arrivals. We've turned on the lights and have begun to arrange the chairs. We're the janitors. The real fun will start after we've gone.
If I weren't here to see that we came into being... if I were just a disembodied mind looking at the universe, I would not think anything like humanity were possible. If it happened once, which we can see, then clearly it is possible (unless there's some incredibly strange trick taking place). But then why would it happen more than once? I can't see the additional occurrence, so my old "disembodied mind" kicks in.
You have no idea if that's true or not, but also, so what if it is? Where did the requirement come from that it has to have arisen at the same time as humans? (I suspect you are quietly adding another unnecessary requirement--that it be technologically advanced life.)
Actually, what I meant was that life, even highly intelligent, evolved, complex life, will be virtually undetectable within a fairly short (cosmically-speaking) period of time from its extinction. The kinds of things we find on earth re early life forms are rare, generally buried, and are organic compounds or rock, which would be indistinguishable from all the rest of the stuff on earth if it were being examined from great distances. Thus far, we have obtained physical specimens from only a few non-terrestrial places - the moon and a few asteroids (in which samples were returned to earth) and mars (examined remotely on mars but not returned to earth). Given this, the existence of non-space-faring life on other planets is virtually unprovable.
Are the odds good? Who says? We know of one place. Until we have two there is no reason to assume many. Having one is no reason to assume only one but one doesn't imply many.
@Ann Althouse: But then why would it happen more than once? I can't see the additional occurrence, so my old "disembodied mind" kicks in.
That's the rub and mystery with all things in life on Earth too. Forget aliens, just look back to fossils in the dirt. We've experienced convergent evolution of turtle-like animals several times, alligator-like animals several times, bird-like animals several times. Etc. They get wiped out from comets or volcanos or plate tectonics, but then the forms reappear and converge on the same eating/preying functions.
This pattern dates back to the earliest forms of complex life.
Examples: Dragonflies, pterosaurs, bird-like dinosaurs, birds, other insects, flying mammals (bats), etc. Some birds and insects serve to pollinate flowers too.
Either the natural world creates and recreates life (e.g., design and guidance) or natural rules routinely set life on "it's gonna happen" railroad tracks (e.g., deism or a 'watchmaker' God). Physics ends here and religion begins.
Existence of anything is absurd. It's either common or a once in eternity fluke. The answer is unknowable, therefore it has no meaning in our lives. That's scary to most people. Hence religion fills up the void and devolves into a mythologic dick measuring contest.
"That's the rub and mystery with all things in life on Earth too. Forget aliens, just look back to fossils in the dirt."
Those repeating patterns derive from physical constants -- gravity, the ideal gas laws, hydrodynamics, etc. We don't have a mechanism that shifts those values significantly over geologic timescales and animals must function in harmony with those constants. Therefore, Quaternary dolphins are shaped much like Devonian sharks.
@Quaestor: Yes, that's the "railroad track" of natural laws viewpoint.
Asking "Why does this happen at all?" shifts to religion.
"Hence religion fills up the void and devolves into a mythologic dick measuring contest."
Don't be such a johnny-one-note reductionist, Howard. Surprise us occasionally.
With signals of unknown origin and fidelity, and when inferring outside of a limited frame of reference, anything is plausible and perhaps possible. On Earth, observing our inner universe, her fertile womb, the mystery is provocative, even controversial.
Religion is a behavioral protocol or model. Faith is one of four logical domains. Who or what do you trust?
The origin and purpose of life evolves in the philosophical logical domain where ideas are conceived and created.
@Enigma: Why assume why has any useful meaning?
Why does the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side. Really? Doesn't that joke make unwarranted assumptions about chicken metaphysics?
Also aborted, as in black holes, to be reconstituted through redistributive change.
https://nypost.com/2026/02/17/us-news/ri-hockey-shooter-robert-dorgan-threatened-to-go-berserk-in-trans-rights-rant-day-before-mass-shooting/
Have you considered the possibility that Obama is an alien? I mean, there’s that whole birth certificate thing.
I did various scenarios as a practice problem a couple of years ago about how much much fuel of various kinds it would take to get a single man-sized mass to Alpha Centauri at various fractions of the speed of light (accounting for deceleration, too) and the numbers suggested that anything faster than 1/1000th the speed of light were nigh impossible from a materials standpoint, even assuming things like antimatter/matter engines.
"Have you considered the possibility that Obama is an alien?"
That's the possibility that has killed science fiction as a literary form.
Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, if there are any, to seek out interesting life and non-wearisome conversation, to boldly go where no one with a lick of sense would bother to go.
There's sound speculation that if you add up everything in the universe, matter and energy (a lot of which is negative) you get ZERO. So there really isn't anything, just nothing (answering the old question), it's just very well-disguised Nothing.
@stunned: Robert Dorgan bears no resemblance to any woman I've laid eyes on, but he might have earned the Mister Congeniality award at a Rick Flair look alike pageant.
I long for the time when the lunatic all wanted to be the next Charles Whitman. Nowadays, they all want to be acknowledged as members of opposite sex before they open fire. Could we call this the Charlene Whitman syndrome?
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a69663990/scientists-say-physical-warp-drive-now-possible/?
It's a large universe, inconceivably large, and it's not the size of a small universe.
And I know what inconceivably means.
Yancey mentions the fuel problem. I wonder about (1) the problem of matter (space dust, whatever) hitting your space ship while youre going say 186000 miles a second. And (2) the impact on the human body of going through space at the speed of light. And (3) accurate navigation and restarting your ship back to the speed of light. Its not enough to go fast, you have slow down and get into your target planet orbit in Alpha Centuri system, and then restart your ship go back to light speed and make it back. Unless you're counting on a one way trip.
Another solution would be to freeze your body and unthaw it when you get to Alpha Centuri in a 200 years. Any volunteers?
Another thing about Star Trek. How do they get the phasers and proton torpedoes to go so fast. The enemy might be going Warp 9, so obviously any phaser or torpedo would have to go faster. Imagine trying to hit an enemy destroyer in ww 2 going 15-30 knots with a torpedo that went 15 knots!
This: "And so I feel vindicated in putting "Obama and the aliens" on yesterday's "5 things I've been finding unbloggable."
Made me think of this: "[Althouse] seizes the opportunity to take credit for [her]self." :-)
" I wonder about (1) the problem of matter (space dust, whatever) hitting your space ship while youre going say 186000 miles a second. "
This is one of the main obstacles to distant travel which requires great speed. The density of matter in deep space is extremely clean at about 1 atom per cubic meter, but hitting even a single grain of sand at the speed of light or even much less would destroy any vehicle, and it would be impossible to cover that distance without hitting at something.
I know for a fact that at least one commenter here is not native to this planet. I have my sources. It's not who you think.
"Hence religion fills up the void and devolves into a mythologic dick measuring contest."
We know what it means when you're dismissive of dick measuring contests.
Existence of anything is absurd. It's either common or a once in eternity fluke.
I think it was Freeman Dyson who said that either we are alone in the universe, or life is everywhere, and either way the implications are staggering.
Life is either widespread, which may be problematic for religious people, or nowhere else, which might give atheists some cause for doubt.
The answer is unknowable, therefore it has no meaning in our lives.
No, I disagree. It's unknowable until irrefutable evidence of life is seen elsewhere. At that point it can be safely assumed that having evolved twice, there are probably millions or billions of places it has evolved or will evolve. (We might be the first. Statistically unlikely, but someone has to be first, just like someone wins the Powerball drawing in the end.)
There are trillions of galaxies, each one containing hundreds of billions to hundreds of trillions of stars. Our star has optimal conditions for life based on carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen. It may be that other combinations of elements work in different geochemical conditions.
How big is it?
Webb's First Deep Field (SMACS 0723): This image, linked above, shows the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 as it appeared 4.6 billion years ago, featuring *thousands of galaxies*, including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared. *It covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm's length.*
There is most likely some form of life "out there", be it simple things like amoebas of sentient beings. The most interesting thing to consider -- at least to me -- is if this life is governed the way we are -- DNA and RNA molecules with the same nitrogen bases. That would point to a single origin for everything.
For those curious about designs of interplanetary and interstellar space ships, both fanciful and "practical", there are few better sources for the amateur than Atomic Rockets:
https://projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/index.php
Tofu King said..."It's not possible to extrapolate the existence of intelligent life elsewhere off a single data point. It doesn't matter how large the universe is."
Unless the universe is infinite, in which case everything possible exists.
Not a fan of the Light Bringer. But this is a big (huuuuge even) nothing burger.
His follow up explanation is rational and sensible.
Science practiced outside of a limited frame of reference is filled with articles of faith that people use to fill the void and serve other purposes. There is an equitable and inclusive need to believe in God, gods, philosophers, the universe, or anything.
It's above Obama's pay grade to discern the evidence and speculation, to separate the baby from the "burden", as it were.
D.D. Driver said…"The odds of a simple 500 basepair sequence spontaneously aligning to create a simple genetic code (even just 500 basepairs) is 10^−301. There are "only" 10^80 *atoms* in the whole universe. Atoms. We are working with astronomically remote probabilities here."
You just proved we don't exist. Congratulations.
"For most of the history of life on Earth it was only single-celled. "
The fact that it arose so early on is an argument for life arising easily.
RCOCEAN II said...
“How do they get the phasers and proton torpedoes to go so fast.”
Any torpedo has its own source of propulsion; in the case of a photon torpedo, it has its own small warp drive that can propel it faster than other ships were capable of. In WWII for example, the US Mark 14 could go 45+ knots, whereas the fastest Japanese destroyers could go about 35 knots.
Phasers travel at whatever speed the script calls for.
there would probably some kind of energy field, that would slow any fast moving object,
there is also the matter of inertial dampeners, that prevents acceleration from tearing the ship apart
phased plasma, would actually be traveling slow that the craft
Unless the universe is infinite, in which case everything possible exists.
It is finite but unbounded in 4-D spacetime, the same way a sphere is finite but unbounded in the 3-dimensional Euclidean world.
How come, in Star Trek, when the Enterprise crew needs to talk to alien vessels, the two ships meet up about a few ship lengths apart, bow to bow, to communicate?
Answer me that, you STEM geniuses!
"I wonder about (1) the problem of matter (space dust, whatever) hitting your space ship while youre going say 186000 miles a second."
No problem, as long as the deflector dish keeps working.
"Another thing about Star Trek. How do they get the phasers and proton torpedoes to go so fast."
Now that's p a good question. The torpedoes could probably use the same warp technology the ship uses, but phasers should be limited to c.
actually thats not really obvious, probably thousands of miles apart,
There are an estimated 23 sextillion (23 with 21 zeros) planets in the universe, and 300 million to 60 billion planets in our galaxy alone that could potentially support life. With numbers like those, it really does seem impossible that there's no other "intelligent" life out there -- though whether they could reach Earth or even contact us is another issue entirely. (But if we really are the only ones, that would be ultimate proof that we're the unique creations of a divine power.)
but celestial mechanics are not really a strong part of the show,
and star wars certainly dispenses with that notion entirely
"It is finite but unbounded in 4-D spacetime, the same way a sphere is finite but unbounded in the 3-dimensional Euclidean world."
While that's the model I like, we certainly don't know that. In fact, the best data right now says it's flat (zero curvature), but we are far, far from having a definitive answer.
Or, rather, the data says the observable universe is flat, which is hard to understand without the inflationary model.
It's a very exciting time right now in cosmology. I wish I was going to live long enough to see how it turns out.
space radiates in every direction, about 15, x 10 (12th)
It is interesting as to how much this argument appears to resemble the old ptolemaic vs copernican systems. Until the math caught up, that problem was also unfalsifiable and had adherents to both sides. Or the propagation of light, that was a good one to. Luminferous ether!
It seems to me that those who would argue that life on Earth is unique in the universe would tend to be the same group that argued, 600 years ago, that the Earth was the center of the universe. Why should we be so unique? There are something like 6000 confirmed exoplanets, leading to an estimated 100 billion total in the milky way galaxy. Assuming we are in a typical galaxy, and given that there are 1 trillion galaxies in the universe (potentially double that), this leads to an estimate on the order of 1e11 x 1e12 = 1e23 planets. Otherwise known as 100 sextillion, if my math is right. Now, on any one of those planets we have people saying that there is 0% chance that life developed at some point in the past 15 billion years?
I define life as anything that can metabolize and reproduce, so it is a very low bar. That definition of life could be where the real conflict lies. Unless people really do believe that Earth is a unique, special snowflake in the universe.
Ted beat me to it, but I showed my math!
Narr said...
How come, in Star Trek, when the Enterprise crew needs to talk to alien vessels, the two ships meet up about a few ship lengths apart, bow to bow, to communicate?
Answer me that, you STEM geniuses!
So in the event of a loss of comms subsystems, they can resort to visual morse and/or semaphor.
darnok when the walls fell
"How come, in Star Trek, when the Enterprise crew needs to talk to alien vessels, the two ships meet up about a few ship lengths apart, bow to bow, to communicate?"
I don't think that's a thing.
Betelgeuse is 400 to 600 light years from our sun. So the light we see from Betelgeuse is at least 400 years old.
According to Feynman there isn't enough energy in the universe to get us to the speed of light.
While there may be other intelligent life in the universe we have never met it and we never will.
"How do they get the phasers and proton torpedoes to go so fast."
That's what I liked about "The Expanse." They used automatic rail guns. Something conceivable.
"I don't think that's a thing."
Well, it's what I remember, otherwise I wouldn't have axed. ISTR many convo scenes ending with one or the other starship peeling away.
Obozo certainly gets into many MAGA heads and lives rent free.
No. He doesn't.
If he would simply shut the fuck up and go away, I guarantee you none of us would ever think about him again.
Not even for a minute.
"Well, it's what I remember, otherwise I wouldn't have axed."
Maybe in the Original Series?
"The fact that it arose so early on is an argument for life arising easily."
In what way? Again, this runs into the problems of extrapolating from the single example of which we know. All one can conclude from that one example is that life in this universe is possible- we can't calculate any odds on a second example being out there.
According to Google's AI results, "[t]he universe is expanding at a rate of approximately 67 to 74 kilometers per second per megaparsec (km/s/Mpc). This means for every 3.26 million light-years (one megaparsec) of distance, space is stretching and causing galaxies to recede faster by that amount. This implies that very distant galaxies are moving away from Earth faster than the speed of light."
So even if there are aliens intelligent enough to travel the stars, they are moving away from us faster than they are gaining on us.
well they've marked us as no go
There are two basically separate ideas of alien life being discussed here- that which can communicate across interstellar space and that which is the equivalent of bacteria. Let's grant that there are 23 sextillion planets capable of supporting life- if just two of the inputs of the Drake equation are billion to one shots, you are already down to 23,000 planets with life that can communicate across interstellar space in the entire universe. Such a number already would make it extremely unlikely there are two such species in The Milky Way or even in its galactic cluster.
"How do they get the phasers and proton torpedoes to go so fast."
They got Jeri Ryan into that silver bodysuit so they obviously had scientific capabilities beyond our imagination.
"In what way? Again, this runs into the problems of extrapolating from the single example of which we know."
Start at the beginning of Earth. Each second that passes can be viewed as a new experiment. Did life just come into existence? The fact that it happens rapidly is actually pretty compelling.
"Maybe in the Original Series?"
ST Classic! Since nobody has jumped in to back me up, and I'm not about to research it, I'll go with that as a minimal claim. Could be wrong though.
But even if I am, how come they fought so many actions with phasers and photon torpedoes at 24 pdr range? Huh? Huh?
"galactic cluster". Them's good eatin'.
I don't think Seven-of-Nine got into that suit. I think it was applied, like an old Vacu-form.
"But even if I am, how come they fought so many actions with phasers and photon torpedoes at 24 pdr range? Huh? Huh?"
I don't know what "pdr" is.
"I don't think Seven-of-Nine got into that suit. I think it was applied, like an old Vacu-form."
I seem to remember reading she hated that suit. But it got her the job, so…
To be a compelling argument, you would have to have two separate examples where it happened soon after a planet had formed and cooled enough for complex organic structures to survive. With one example, you can't conclude anything about how easy it happens. I call this the Hoyt Wilhelm Fallacy.
I don't agree, Yancey.
If it were very unlikely for life to form, you would expect that it only happened after a long period of time after conditions allowed it. Instead, we see it started virtually the second the experiment was turned on. That says something about how likely/unlikely it is.
How come, in Star Trek, when the Enterprise crew needs to talk to alien vessels, the two ships meet up about a few ship lengths apart, bow to bow, to communicate?
Answer me that, you STEM geniuses!
Well, dark matter, of course. *
*I was an English major.
“Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there’s life out there."
That is some true Choom gang epistemology that Obama has there. The universe is not vast statistically, it is vast in theory, based on limited observation. We don’t use modeled distributions of uncertainty to tell us the universe is “vast”.
And a vast universe does not automatically guarantee everything imaginable happens. You still need:
• a defined probability model
• independence assumptions
• a known generating process
So Obama has added nothing to the argument. Asimov wrote that as far as the number of alien civilizations in an infinite universe there can be one, us, or an infinite number, there are not going to be 3 or 11. But that is not a testable hypothesis either.
"I don't think Seven-of-Nine got into that suit. I think it was applied, like an old Vacu-form."
I seem to remember reading she hated that suit. But it got her the job, so…
To paraphrase Craig Ferguson, nobody cares how she felt about the suit.
Sorry, O.M. I almost said 'broadside range'-- 'pdr' is pounder as in the days of sail.
As to the probability of alien life, the most probable outcome (as far as I'm concerned) is that I'll be gone before we find out.
"I know for a fact that at least one commenter here is not native to this planet. I have my sources. It's not who you think."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msKubf4fE8E
Narr said...
“How come, in Star Trek, when the Enterprise crew needs to talk to alien vessels, the two ships meet up about a few ship lengths apart, bow to bow, to communicate?
Answer me that, you STEM geniuses!”
Because the galactic protocols on interpersonal space was created by Italians.
(Not a STEM guy)
Hard to starboard Mr. Sulu. We need to evade that photon torpedo.
"As to the probability of alien life, the most probable outcome (as far as I'm concerned) is that I'll be gone before we find out."
Yeah.
"Hard to starboard Mr. Sulu. We need to evade that photon torpedo."
Then there was the one where Kirk's time was speeded up, which allowed him to step aside from the phaser beam.
OK, you all have convinced me that we don't exist. Does that mean tomorrow is like a snow day?
It means every day is a snow day.
"If it were very unlikely for life to form, you would expect that it only happened after a long period of time after conditions allowed it."
And I would counter with this- it might have only happened after a long period of time of 11 billion years with sextillions of planets with similar initial conditions as found on Earth at the time life did arise here and there is no counter to this argument precisely because we lack any other datum but life on this planet. Would you really have written, "Well, life arising must be a hard thing to happen," if life on the Earth had only formed at, let's say, 3 billion years of the Earth's existence?
"And I would counter with this- it might have only happened after a long period of time of 11 billion years with sextillions of planets with similar initial conditions as found on Earth at the time life did arise here and there is no counter to this argument precisely because we lack any other datum but life on this planet."
Yes, there is a counter. Apparently, from the data we have here, life starting is easy. Happened immediately after conditions allowed it. If physics and chemistry are the same on other planets, I would expect the same result. Why would it be easy here and hard elsewhere, given the same conditions ?
The only out is that it's hard everywhere and we just got lucky. That's possible, just not likely.
"Would you really have written, "Well, life arising must be a hard thing to happen," if life on the Earth had only formed at, let's say, 3 billion years of the Earth's existence?"
Yes, that's exactly what I would say.
"The only out is that it's hard everywhere and we just got lucky. That's possible, just not likely."
It's possible and we have no idea what the odds are since we have a single point of data. Honestly, would you ever, in any other situation, extrapolate a graph given a single data point? Even if life arising is "easy" you simply don't know how it would have played out were the experiment of "Earth" were run 1 billion times- for all you can know, life arises only that one time or arises a couple of times at widely spaced starting points. All you are expressing is guess about the probability of it happening at all or at a specific time.
"It's possible and we have no idea what the odds are since we have a single point of data."
But Yancey, we do have data on how likely it is; we have time-series data from right here on Earth. Turn on the experiment and life starts. Immediately. Again, maybe we got lucky, but the odds of getting lucky are poor. That's why it's called getting lucky.
"Even if life arising is "easy" you simply don't know how it would have played out were the experiment of "Earth" were run 1 billion times- for all you can know, life arises only that one time or arises a couple of times at widely spaced starting points."
But then it's not "easy". Saying it's "easy" is synonymous with saying it will happen frequently. It is likely.
We're just going to have to agree to disagree, I guess.
I know I said "agree to disagree", but I think I can clean up my argument, so here goes.
IF life is likely to form on Earth, then it is likely to form elsewhere with the same conditions. This is from our assumption that physical laws are the same "everywhere".
The question then is, was life likely to have formed on Earth?
Two possibilities:
1) Likely to have formed.
2) Not likely to have formed.
If it is likely, then we should expect to see it happen as soon as conditions allow it (this is, in fact, what we observe).
If it is unlikely to have formed, but it formed anyway as soon as conditions allowed it, well that's possible but that's a low probability event.
Maybe that helps, though I realize I'm just saying the same thing over again.
“How come, in Star Trek, when the Enterprise crew needs to talk to alien vessels, the two ships meet up about a few ship lengths apart, bow to bow, to communicate?"
Because Kirk always wanted to teach the alien women about Earth love.
40 years to alpha-Centauri Probe, not people.
Bennu is an asteroid where we sent a probe and then had the probe return to earth. This is what they found.
"In January 2025, it was reported that a wide range of carbon- and nitrogen-rich organic compounds have been identified in samples returned from Bennu, including 14 of the 20 amino acids that make up proteins in terrestrial organisms, as well as all five nucleobases (adenine, thymine, cytosine, guanine, and uracil) that are the essential building blocks of DNA and RNA"
I'm not sure paradox is the right word, but it's interesting to me to ponder the implications of our ignorance--
Frinstance, we might be able to prove life exists (or once existed) elsewhere but how can we prove it doesn't/didn't?
You can't prove a negative, on the scale of all that exists.
Maybe I just need more covfefe.
I'm sure it's unknowable, but what if life started multiple times on Earth, died and started again, or started in multiple places. That would mean it was easy anywhere condition were Earthlike.
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