[Buku42]

Quote: Originally Posted by lost411

Yes, But they havnt. Its just peoples ideas.

It's just a hypothetical example of indisputable evidence.

[lost411]

lets say the sky fell down....

[Gandolph13]

Quote: Originally Posted by Buku42

I agree with that. Even if let's say they are monitoring for radio transmissions, just like our SETI programs, we have only been transmitting radio waves for about a hundred years or so. That means that even by the small chance, races are out there looking for radio signals around the Earth, the only ones who would have detected us by now would be the ones within a 100 light year radius. So assuming the nearest system with life is 10 or 20 thousand light years away then there's no way that we have been detected yet. But like you said, "even if they magically did", they would have had to have left their home planet before humans existed to get here in our lifetime.

This is with the assumption that if there are aliens out there (which I believe there are) that they would be using our technology to travel.
So many people talk about light speed, but Einstein (I think) and Steven Hawkins mentioned something about the concept of warping space.
If this were possible, by a race millions of years more advanced than us, they could be here in next to no time.
As for anyone listening for radio signals, I have often seen mention that when we sent nuclear signals into space, it would alert any advanced races to our presence.
I saw mention by Buku about astronomers not reporting things, but it is hard enough just finding the moon with a high powered telescope (without computer goto), and trying to see a spec on the horizon would be impossible.
I spend many hours outside at nights in a country region with nice dark skies, and have seen many things which aren't easily explained. Naked eye viewing. I leave my telescope and binoculars inside.
One theory I recently heard was the garbage bags and candles, and there is absolutely no way in hell anything I have seen is a garbage bag travelling faster than any technology on earth, and changing direction at high speed.

[lost411]

Quote: Originally Posted by Gandolph13

As for anyone listening for radio signals, I have often seen mention that when we sent nuclear signals into space, it would alert any advanced races to our presence

Yes but again this means that the signals will only travel one light year per year, ie that it would take for ever for other advance life to know we were here, even if they could use warp drives etc to get here within a very short time.

[Buku42]

That's true. Even if they could get here over night, it would still take light or radio transmissions from Earth a very long time to reach them. In all likelihood, they are probably tens of thousands of light years away. Our signal probably won't reach them for many thousands of years. But as Gandolph pointed out, that's if they are using technology similar to our own. Chances are, they aren't using anything close to what we use, as they are probably eons ahead of us. So it is true that in theory, space-time could be warped to shorten the distance between two locations. But we would be able to detect such a well in the fabric of space-time, by the motions of all of the stellar bodies around it. Warping of space on this scale would alter the orbital course and velocity of every star in this region of the galaxy, not to mention everything in our solar system. But back to the problem of being detected. Even if we're sending "nuclear signals" which made us detectable, any kind of signal we send will be limited by the speed of light. But our technology is limited to radio, and since any civilization more advanced than us is probably way beyond radio technology, they still wouldn't detect us. Their technology would be too advanced to pick up our primitive radio signals. They would have to, as Carl Sagan put it, 'pull the old radio devices from display out of a history museum', or something. Otherwise it's kind of like trying to amplify sound with binoculars. So while being more advanced than us would give them an advantage in traveling to us, it would put them at a disadvantage in initially detecting us.

[lost411]

I'm not so much against the thought aliens exist, more that we would never find each other. Even if they did i doubt they would fly around in the sky like people have said they have seen them for decades.