UFOs and Paranormal stuff

Ghosts exist, in one way or another, they exist. UFO's not so much. i agree that in our gigantic universe there HAS to be other intellegent lifeforms out there, and that we are not the only ones, however, i believe they are if any, not much more advanced than we are, we are still working on getting to Mars, we wont be jumping Galaxies any time soon, so i believe that any other lifeforms wont be either, any alleged UFO's are merely government expariments. just because something is an Unidentified Foregin Object to you or me, it is not to the government.....

 

Welcome.
Thats an intersting theory. Certainly if a stealth bomber goes over head at night it might seem a tad unidentified, don'ta think?

 

ya thats what im sayin, sure we wouldnt know what it is, but it donst make it a UFO with aliens inside it

 

You're right, but the human imagination can run wild very easily, so when something like that happens thats usually the first thing to come to mind.

 

But then you have two problems:

1) Is this a necessary condition? Are there things that are 'alive' that wouldn't fit this category? Are rocks alive? (They're certainly not alive with respect to our definition of life, or the one you're proposing...but by the universal definition, would they be?) Does life always go hand in hand with death? What if re-incarnation were true? How would that affect your definition?

2) Is this a sufficient condition? Are there any things that fit these rules, but are not alive? Certainly in the case of viruses, they would be alive by your definition, but not by our conventional definition...but the question really becomes, are they or not?

It seems more like you're just taking our definition, and removing some conditions to make it encompass more things...but who says that's what actually defines life? That's the issue we have when trying to define life: We don't know what it is. (Heck, according to Descartes, we don't even know if we're living.)

 

Eh. It's much more simplified, and sometimes I wonder if this life is just a dream.

And, it depends. Though I don't believe in it myself, if the Big Bang theory were true, planets with life closer to the origin point should have more advanced civilization, but planets farther away should not.

 

That's not necessarily true...

Of course if big bang were true, then evolution is probably true too, so suppose those theories held. Assume also (as you seem to be doing) that how advanced a civilization is, is directly proportional to how long life has lived on that planet.

Ok, for planet 1 (close to the origin), Let's say it took x1 years for the planet to form. It took y1 years for the first forms of life to appear, and z1 years have passed since then. Thus:

x1 + y1 + z1 = "Now." (ie. we've accounted for all the time that's passed since the big bang, until present day)

Note that z1 is representative of how 'advanced' the civilization is.

Now for planet 2, we want more time to have passed, for the planet's formation. Thus, let x2 = (x1 + a), for some positive number a.
If we let y2 and z2 represent things similar to how we did for planet 1, we have:

x2 + y2 + z2
= (x1 + a) + y2 + z2
= "Now"

Now is where we can play around a bit. What if y2 < y1? That is, what if it took a very very long time for life to form on planet 1, but planet 2 essentially 'got lucky' ?

Well, suppose y2 < (y1 - a)...that is, y2 = (y1 - a) - b, for some positive number b.

Then we have the following:

x2 + y2 + z2
= (x1 + a) + ((y1 - a) - b) + z2
= x1 + y1 - b + z2
= "Now"

But x1 + y1 + z1 = "Now" so by the transitive property (fancy way of saying if two things equal the same thing, then they must be equal):

x1 + y1 - b + z2 = "Now" = x1 + y1 + z1

So let's cancel x1 and y1:

z2 - b = z1
=> z2 = z1 + b

Since b > 0, we have:

z2 > z1. That is, the 2nd planet is 'more advanced' than the first.

So if y2 < y1 - a, then z2 > z1. If not, then what you're saying is right. But the point is, that's a bad assumption to make, especially since 'life forming' could take many many years...or even never happen.

 

This is a debate. Not math. Care to tell that to us in proper English? Because now I am lost.

 

Keyword in my post was should. I never said that life would automatically be more advanced just because one planet was created before the other.

And Zerieth -- he had a point. Maybe you should've paid more attention in algebra.

 

Sorry. Math is not my best subject. I will try to read that...
Odd that. I can agree with that. Amazing what can happen when your mind is not cluttered. Lol.

 

I'm saying that there's actually no 'should' involved...namely that there are two uncontrolled variables. It's like saying in principle, if I went out in a rainstorm I could 'dodge between the raindrops.' No reason I can't in theory...

And yet if I try...

Too many uncontrolled variables (ie. raindrops).

EDIT: Nearly a day later...to drive the point home, I'm also saying that any 'super-advanced civilization' that is close to the origin of the big bang is arguably coincidental. There's no reason their evolution (or however life began) had to have taken the same, or less time than ours did.

Infact, to throw a wrench in the gears a bit (And just for the sake of interesting conversation), we're not even sure exactly how far away we are from the origin of the big bang (assuming it's true). This poses a problem when trying to estimate the age of the universe/of life/all else. Special Relativity (S.R.) is the source of this problem, regarding reference frames (I can go on about this if anyone's interested), and one of the main results of S.R. is that when you go faster...things get shorter ('length-contraction').

So how far from the origin are we? Well...let's say we could measure it. We can't currently, we can only extrapolate back to what we think happened, which has billions of potential errors/assumptions. But suppose we could, and we said we are x light years from the origin. Ok, that's great.

But how far away is this really? If I start running toward this alleged origin, the distance d to the origin shrinks according to S.R. ...so d < x. If I go very very fast (ie. light speed), then d tends to 0. See the dilemma? No-one can agree on exactly how far away it is, because we're all moving at different speeds. Not to mention, there is no such thing as an 'inertial' reference frame (ie. one that everyone agrees is absolutely at rest, to which we can relate)...so we don't even know how fast we're actually going.

 

You have a math major? Light still takes time to do something. When you look at the sky you are seeing stars that are not even there. If you had a strong enough telescope and knew were to look, you could see some animals on a distant world that doesn't even exist anymore. In that we say we are looking into the past all the time. Amazing huh? And we can make a simple guess by using math to figure out the pull of gravity required to keep our planet in orbit, and how far the sun is by just sending a probe that way. We have done it I think and such a probe could tell us how far it traveled at what speed at what time. See?

 

(Because you asked) Introducing the Lorentz Transformation equations.

It's believed we live in a so-called 'Minkowski Model' of the universe...that is, we have three spatial dimensions, and one time dimension (4-D space). One this space, we can define a metric...that is, a 'way to define distance' (or those with more math background, an inner product).

As a side note, an example of a tangible metric is the Euclidean metric, which we encounter in our day to day lives. If you want to know the difference between two points (x0,y0) and (x1,y1) in the plane, you simply say ds^2 = dx^2 + dy^2 (this is analogous to pythagorean's theorem...and it makes sense that way, in the plane).

In Minkowski space, we define a new metric known as the Minkowski metric. It says ds^2 = dx^2 + dy^2 + dz^2 - cdt^2. This gives us what is known as a 'space-time interval.'

Using this metric (and some fancy math tricks), we can define what's called a 'transformation' on the space-time intervals. That is to say, we can 'change' between some properties of the space, leaving certain things intact. In this particular case, one guy investigated a transformation that will keep space-time intervals intact, while being able to 'change' velocities: we can now know what someone would see if they were going x meters per second*. These transformations are named the Lorentz Transformations.

*Note though that this does not work for the speed of light, as this is a so-called limiting case (ie. calculus), and our intuition with infinities stinks.


Now that the boring introduction is out of the way, we can explore some corollaries of the transformations....I've basically been saying all this to show there's a basis for what I'm going to be saying next.

(See Lorentz transformation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Careful exploration of the lorentz transformation (Special Relativity again) will quantify exactly how much length contracts, time dilates, etc.

But what does this mean? Suppose you sent a probe, it's travelling half the speed of light, 0.5c (question 1: Relative to what? (this is a damn good question)), and it travels for 4 days, and perceives that it travels a distance x.

Suppose an appropriate time 't' later, you sent a 2nd probe travelling at .75c, so that in its own frame it travels a distance x in '4 days minus t' (ie. the 'left over' time).

Question: Will they meet up after this 4 day period? (they both seem to have travelled the same distance...)

The answer is no. The second probe travels faster, and perceives 'length contraction' of the space directly in front of him. That is, if you had a third person watch both probes, he would see probe 1 travelling way more than the alleged distance x...and probe 2 travelling even more than that, due to this funny length contraction stuff.

The point is, we can attempt to measure these things as you've said...but when can we be sure our measurements are accurate? The take home point: We can't. If I sent a second probe to the sun, travelling much faster than the first one that you mentioned...we would come up with completely different (both valid) numbers.


I could probably talk about this stuff all day...I don't know if I shouldn't just make a topic and explain some neat stuff like the Twin Paradoxes, or even this idea a bit clearer.

 

Dear god. I asked you to do that?

 

I believe in UFO's... I'm sure that there is life out there. We probably just haven't realised until now, because we're looking for humans. That is, of cource, possible, but the way I see it, very hard to believe. We're not the only ones in the universe, but as human race, I'm not sure if we are.

and ghosts.... that is hard for me to believe. I believe a soul goes out of the body once it dies, and it can see us, but there's no really proof of that... all there is are people that have been in a coma, and say that it's like their soul was unattached to the body, and they could see everything from above. the way i see it, even if that souls exist... i doubt anyone can see those.

 

i beleive in all this kind of stuff too.
ive seen a ghost in my room before. it was the scariest thing evverr.

i was inn my room gettin ready for school and i looked at my TV for a min and saw that the reflection of a corner of my room was a girl floating off the ground in a white dress and long black hair. i couldnt see her face but it scared the living shit out of me lol.
it was just...sitting there lol.

also one of my friends can see ghosts and talk to them and such, she gets feelings and can see auras around people. she saw my dead cat at my house once and started playing with it, it was so creepy. and i know its for real too, she can also do healings, i couldnt walk on my knee at all a couple weeks ago and she did a special healing on it and now its like nothing ever happened to it. pretty weird stuff but its pretty cool

 

I don't know what to think for UFOs. They could exist, I don't know. As for ghosts, I think they exist as a form of a dead person's energy. Let me try to explain it like Mike did with that math.

In Einstien's equation, E=MC squared, meaning that mass is energy. When a person died, the lose a certain amount of mass. So, where did that energy go?

 

Actually, E = mc^2 doesn't show that mass is energy...rather it demonstrates the proportions involved when converting mass into energy. It is literally, the formula for an object's so-called 'resting energy.'

It is true, that mass and energy are different forms of the same thing. And infact, you can relativistically calculate how much rest energy something has by its mass, and how fast it's going, and can do more precise calculations involving momentum and collisions by factoring in relativistic phenomena like length contraction, etc.

There's a very subtle difference there...but an important distinction to make. They are not the same...they are different forms of the same thing.


The point though, is that we spontaneously lose mass when dying, and it's unaccounted for...this 'represents' some energy that is lost. Still a valid point, but the reason I'm being nitpicky is that nothing is saying it's energy that's lost. It may well be quite literally, mass we are losing...spontaneously teleporting some part of us, like say a soul. There are numerous arguments one could make, astral projection, a 'mind's eye' a 'soul.'

 

wow..im way to dumb to understand any of this XD

 

You aren't dumb just because you don't understand what he is saying.

Oh, and thanks Mike for clearing that up. I thought that I would make a mistake somewhere alonge the line.