Roswell 1947

[The Boofon]

I'm not saying it's more alien as that would be absurd.

 

 

I know.

 

Space wins hands down.

[The Boofon]

dunno mate, im not an alien

 

 

I'm not so sure about that.

[tup]

Anyway I'm not giving two fucks about the ocean.

 

All I know is that if aliens were hellbent on harvesting our planet for resources, they'd do well to study the hungry bastards making their living in the marine environment as a starting point.

[spamspamspam]

Anyway I'm not giving two fucks about the ocean.

 

All I know is that if aliens were hellbent on harvesting our planet for resources, they'd do well to study the hungry bastards making their living in the marine environment as a starting point.

 

I'm sure if they came here to harvest our resources they'd not be coming for oil and they'd already have a pretty feasible plan for taking and transporting our water. Not like they'd turn up after travelling 50 light years or so across the galaxy just to turn round and think to themselves - right lads were here, how we getting this stuff home. They're bound to have a bit more sense that your average Aberdonian heading to Ikea.

[tup]

Not as if they're going to contract the Subsea 7 themselves to lay a pipe from here to Mars.

[Crossbow]

Not siding with MT here, he's certainly showing he mintil in this thread but the bit here is well off the mark Crossbow.

 

The vast majority of the ocean is totally alien to us. More humans have walked on the moon than have seen the deepest parts of the ocean, there's only 1 man alive thats been to the deepest parts of the oceans and only 2 men that have ever been there. The surface of the ocean and the bit we fish and swim in would make up no more than 5% of the oceans themselves.

 

The space suits NASA used for their maned flights and space walks were almost identical to the deep sea diving suits that were used in the 60's and 70's by the divers working on the platforms in deep water off the coast of Mexico etc. They are both pressurised environments built to make sure the person inside survives the outer conditions... The company that designed and built the space suits also designs and builds diving suits and the space suits were based on their diving suit designs.

 

In fact the hardest part of the whole space shiniz we do at the moment is getting there in the first place and then getting back. Once the rocket is out of the atmosphere its relatively plane sailing compared to the dangers of exploring the depths of the sea.

 

Not wishing to disagree with you here (and absolutely concur with RS - we're going to end up counting angels on the head of a pin) but space is big and we have relatively speaking little idea of lots of the environments - we have explored less than 0.000000000000000000000000000000000001% - meaningless figure, haven't a clue how much we've explored but given the sizes involved am certain it is way less than 5%. The pressures in some planets even in our solar system make our ocean depths look like a walk in the park.

 

All of space is alien to us - I agree as a species we don't last long submerged but compared to exposure to the vaccuum of space or indeed the gravity well in Jupiter we're doing great in our own backyard. In this small respect MT is right, space is alien, our species has no adaptation for it, even to begin to explore it.

[Bobby Connor]

so...pretty alien then, seeing as how we can NOT go to it?

 

Pretty alien, but nowhere near as alien as, for example, the sea under the ice of Europa. We have no fucking clue what is under there.

[spamspamspam]

Not wishing to disagree with you here (and absolutely concur with RS - we're going to end up counting angels on the head of a pin) but space is big and we have relatively speaking little idea of lots of the environments - we have explored less than 0.000000000000000000000000000000000001% - meaningless figure, haven't a clue how much we've explored but given the sizes involved am certain it is way less than 5%. The pressures in some planets even in our solar system make our ocean depths look like a walk in the park.

 

All of space is alien to us - I agree as a species we don't last long submerged but compared to exposure to the vaccuum of space or indeed the gravity well in Jupiter we're doing great in our own backyard. In this small respect MT is right, space is alien, our species has no adaptation for it, even to begin to explore it.

 

I wasn't meaning the vast amount of space we haven't been to, just the part we have been to.

 

When you look at the parts of our tiny corner of the solar system we've explored both on and off the planet and the difficulties and environments we've encountered getting to the ISS are far easier to handle than exploring the deepest parts of the Mariana Trench but the basis of the technologies we use are almost identical.

 

I doubt the choice between imploding in the deep sea or having your blood boil in space would be an easy one to make, I'd go out on a limb through and hazard a guess that both are just as deadly

[Bobby Connor]

I'd donate my hoover to this scheme. How many do you reckon we'll need MT?

 

[Ke1t]

because it rains TOO much here?

 

we could hoover it up somehow and either give it out to countries suffering from drought

 

win win

 

and im being serious

 

 

Not to knock that idea on the head... but consider how much water weighs. Lift a full bucket of water. It's fucking heavy. Aside from the fact that the technology to 'Hoover up clouds' doesn't exist, in fact let's just pretend it did... for the sake of argument... you would then have to find a viable means by which to collect meaningful quantities, contain it, transport it, then distribute it. The energy and mechanisms required to do so would render the whole process worthless, because this would have to be an ongoing process starting from zero on a routine (daily) basis. This isn't even taking into account that clouds are unpredictable (aside from over certain areas of the Antarctic, which we might talk about later ) so you can't even guarantee that there will even be a source of moisture to harvest.

 

If you want to collect and distribute water, a far easier method would be to build desalination plants, although admittedly the water quality isn't the greatest, it can be used for agriculture, freeing up local water sources for purely human consumption.

 

In the case of inland areas, pumping stations could be used to bring water either from bodies of water or from aforementioned desalination plants.

 

The technology for these solutions would be cheaper, more practical, more readily available, and more reliable than Cloud Hoovering.

 

 

wait...were on the same side

 

im saying the ocean IS alien

 

 

I'd tend to agree with that depending on the definition of the word 'Alien' that's being used.

 

Check this thing out.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOyBSKNQj2w

 

Going back to the Grey Alien thing... the chances of an alien creature independently evolving to look almost identical to a human must be incalculably tiny. The process that evolved humans from primordial sludge to their current shape was the result of billions of years of trial and error, following multiple branches, evolutionary dead ends, and shit that works or doesn't work.

 

We could just as easily have ended up looking like centipedes, cockroaches or octobats. And by 'we' I mean the dominant species. Which doesn't even necessarily mean intelligence enough to bang two rocks together.

 

If we were to start evolution on Earth all over again, using the exact same building blocks, conditions and natural incidents, you almost certainly wouldn't even get primates, let alone Homosapiens. There are just too many variables to even consider the likelyhood as anything more than near impossible.

[Ke1t]

I'd donate my hoover to this scheme. How many do you reckon we'll need MT?

 

 

Consider one hooverful, per person, per day. Is that about 2 gallons?

 

So OHPPPD x Number of people you want to supply.

 

Now take 2011's East Africa Drought. About 10,000,000 people affected in that area alone. so 10,000,000x2 gallons, 20 million gallons a day purely for human consumption, not taking into account agriculture, livestock or waste, and you need a vacuum cleaner ten million times the size of your typical vacuum cleaner, just for storage. Then you'd need to find a chick ten million times normal size... we probably have one or two in America... to push it, say, ten thousand miles from a 'wet' region to Africa. I only suggest a woman doing the work because vacuuming is woman's work.

 

And she would need to do that every day.

[spamspamspam]

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOyBSKNQj2w

 

I've seen the 3D version Oceaneering have of this. Pretty weird to say the least.

[Bobby Connor]

Guy in the comments section reckons it's just one of these that has got tangled up with the sub and turned inside out:

 

[Bobby Connor]

[Ke1t]

 

Is that the three stages of anal prolapse?

[The Oxford Don]

if that came out of a ship in the sky, youd have NO problem in shouting "alien!"

 

also...why is something from the deepest part of the sea that we cant get to, not an alien, but something from space...is?

 

No reason at all, but that's more to do with lazy semantics.

 

Someone who has come here from Somalia without a passport can be legally described as an 'alien'.

 

The correct term for Gerbiloids from the planet Qweegle 7 is 'extra-terrestrials'.

[The Oxford Don]

i think youre the lazy one

 

we can not and have not explored "the deep"

 

so why is something from there not an alien...

 

it fucking is

 

AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

 

I agree - that is the point of my post. Something from the deep absolutely can be described an alien, as can some fucker from East Africa who has just blagged his way through border control at Dover having spent twelve weeks in the back of a lorry selling fridges.

 

Once more, for the hard of thinking: the term 'alien' actually just means 'something other', 'something out of the ordinary'. However it has become a lazy shorthand for 'extra-terrestrial', which is the correct term for the wee dudes with the massive heids who drink hydrogen for breakfast and seem to take an inordinate level of interest in probing people's bottoms.

 

Cheers.

[The Oxford Don]

im well aware of that, like in the song, "oh, oh, im an alien...im a legal alien and im something something in new york"

 

however i wasnt aware we were being that petty

 

crux of the matter is...something from the deep is as much an alien, or an ET as something from space

 

its essentially a bourbon creme scenario

 

space on top...us in middle....ocean below

 

Petty? Petty???

 

Christ on a trikey, all I am trying to do is definte the terms of the debate.

 

Something from the deep is NOT an extra-terrestrial, since the term 'extra-terrestrial' means, by definition, erm, 'from outside of Planet Earth'.

 

Your bourbon creme scenario makes no sense. Space is not 'up' and the ocean 'down'! Space completely surrounds and envelops us, in fact we live in it and are constantly passing through it.

 

A better way to express it is that in terms of SETI there are two types of lifeform, but only one that we are actually aware of - life on Earth (yes, including the bastard oceans), and life elsewhere. Life on Earth exists, this much we know, hence why I am sitting typing you this message whilst keeping one eye on the women's volleyball. Life elsewhere in the Universe almost certainly exists, but we have no clear evidence of it yet.

 

You're trying to draw some kind of half-baked parallel between outer space and the oceans which do not and cannot, by definition, harbour 'extra-terrestrial' life. Anything which has evolved on this planet and lives here is T-E-R-R-E-S-T-R-I-A-L.

 

And if that is petty then 'guilty'.

[Bobby Connor]

Christ on a motorbike.

[The Oxford Don]

fair enough

 

this is where my "textbook" education is found to be lacking...

 

i have general intelligence, i like learning for myself, therefore wasnt aware of the extra terrestrial thing

 

however...could it not be argued that the deep isnt "terrestrial"?

 

 

Sort of. Well actually, not quite. The Latin word 'terra' really means 'land' or 'dry land' (like in the phrase 'terra firma'). But in the context of life that is 'Terrestrial' or 'Extra-Terrestrial', the definitions are pretty clear.

 

If you want to argue this point, you'd better take it up with Spielberg!

 

Incidentally, one of the few films more or less guaranteed to reduce me to a blubbering wreck...

[Crossbow]

fair enough

 

this is where my "textbook" education is found to be lacking...

 

i have general intelligence, i like learning for myself, therefore wasnt aware of the extra terrestrial thing

 

however...could it not be argued that the deep isnt "terrestrial"?

 

No, all life on earth is based on a couple of dozen amino acids and nucleic acids (I am aware of the odd chiral bacteria and minor variations on our basic theme so please don't quibble); it is highly probable that extra terrestrial life will be protein based in some fashion and have for simplicity sake a Darwinian based mutation system which may or may not be DNA/RNA based but will not, barring von Danikenesque events,be the same as ours. Those creatures shown above from deep sea trenches though unusual will have very well recognised biochemistry, extra terrestrial life will not.

[The Oxford Don]

yeah i thought terra meant land...ie a terranium...something you put a land dwelling pet in

 

so, basically...im right in saying that something from the sea cant be terrestrial?

 

Only if you lived about 2,000 years ago, and spoke fluent Latin.

 

Perhaps the way to look at this is that, even if you insist on a literal rendering of the Latin root of the word 'terrestrial' and furthermore insist that it can no longer apply to creatures which live in the sea, that does NOT mean that those creatures are then 'extra-terrestrial' since that word has a fairly specific meaning relating to life from other planets.

 

Words and their meanings change over time. An ancient Roman could never even have conceived of us having this type of debate, far less that the word 'terra' could have evolved into a whole host of other words.

 

It's like the Latin word 'filius' meaning 'son', which has given us the word 'affiliation'. Now obviously people can have an affiliation for people other than their own male offspring, so the word has changed and evolved over time into something slightly different.

 

Fascinating topic, etymology, but not something I'm wildly keen on diving into at 12.25am. A bit like the oceans, in fact.

[The Oxford Don]

see, even though im relatively certain uve just slung about "buzz words" there in a futile attempt to bamboozle me...that bit in bold is what makes me come back for more

 

how DARE you say something like that

 

I suppose that is theoretically correct, in that it is entirely possible that life on other planets has evolved along exactly the same lines as Earth. But the odds against that are literally incalculably huge.

 

ALL life on Earth is actually very closely related... even humans and oak trees have something like 70% genetic commonality. So what Crossbow wrote is correct: even those deep-sea weirdos from the photos earlier will have a biochemistry that is instantly understandable to a 'terrestrial' (ha!) biologist, since at the level of its DNA it will look an awful lot like all the other organisms of Planet Earth (basically, protein-based).

 

The chances of Earth-like proteins and amino acids evolving elsewhere in the Universe are almost infinitely small. Not impossible, no, but vastly unlikely.

 

Which is precisely what makes the potential for SETI such an endlessly fascinating topic: just what WILL a non-protein based lifeform actually look like? Would we even recognise it as organically 'alive', and vice-versa?

 

We are of course now back at Kelt's point regarding the suspiciously humanoid appearance of the Roswell autopsy 'cadavers'.

[The Oxford Don]

Just switched off the volleyball on the red button to find myself watching a BBC documentary about sending a probe to Mars!

 

Christ...

[The Oxford Don]

haha and what...you dont think that means something?

 

 

 

are you kidding on?

 

we are uncovering all sorts of untruths here, all borne from my questions and theories

 

oxford don has even admitted i was right

 

the good thing here is that folk are engaging

 

theyre quoting shit they were told was truth from, im guessing, as far back as 20 odd years ago

 

only now, under proper duress, is it being unravelled as bull shit

 

Heh heh, I salute your optimism!

 

Only 'right' insofar as it is 'right' to suggest that East Stirlingshire could win the Europa League in 2015. They absolutely could... but we all kinda know that it ain't gonna happen.

 

And the chances of extra-terrestrial life being DNA-based are even smaller than the chances of the Shire conquering Europe.

[Ke1t]

but there ARE centipedes etc...

 

so whys it any less likely for humans to be somewhere else, than centipedes?

 

 

You're not really getting the point I'm making.

 

Yes, there are centipedes. There are literally millions of different designs for life forms on the Earth. Aside from the ability to think in abstracts, there's not a whole lot of difference between a human and a rat, genetically speaking. That ability to think in abstracts has very little to do with the physiology of a human being.

 

We'd STILL be able to think critically if you substituted our arms for tentacles.

 

We'd still be able to think critically if you substituted our feet for them funny flipper things that seals have,

 

We'd still be able to think critically if we had tails, leopard spots, the face of a donkey or the body of a raccoon.

 

The point is that we didn't become the dominant species based upon our physical appearance. There are an almost endless number of modifications that could, in an evolutionary sense, have made humans even better at surviving, and we have our current shape merely by one in a billion chance.

 

'Aliens', in the traditional sense, mimic our own physiology almost exactly... for that to happen they would have had to follow exactly the same path, with virtually zero deviations, to come up with a shape that looks, to all intents and purposes, like a small, stripped down human being.

 

The chances of that happening are so remote as to be inconceivable.

 

Literally, they would have had to follow the same path... the annihilation of superpredators (Dinosaurs in the Gulf of Mexico Meteor Impact) at exactly the right moment for..., the rise of small lemurs, the survival of multiple mass-extinctions, the transition from forest to grasslands, the transition from grasslands to temperate, the transition from basic survival skills to the ability to problem solve. Physiologically they would have had to follow the exact same path. Fins appearing, fins transitioning to limbs, limbs sprouting fingers, joints in exactly the same places, eyes in exactly the same places, ears and nose in exactly the same orientation, chest, hands, feet, toes.... I'm assuming you can see the sheer scale of the unlikeliness of this occurring.....

 

Why wouldn't a giant, sentient centipede have made it to abstract thought first?

 

Whatever Greys are, assuming they exist, they're not the result of billions of years of evolutionary chance.

 

In essence, they're a stripped down human. A human lacking all the unnecessary stuff.

 

Hair... not needed.

 

5 fingers... not needed.

 

6' height? not needed.

 

And because they're artificial, they're not going to be needing a cock, that's for sure.

 

Even we, marginally smart monkeys, are at the stage where we're fucking around with biological creations. There's a mouse running around with a giant ear somewhere, I'm sure you've seen it.

 

In another few hundred years, biological androids will be able to perform the tasks that mechanicals do today. And because they're manufactured.... we won't be building cocks onto them.

 

Except, as I've mentioned, in Japan.

[The Oxford Don]

You're not really getting the point I'm making.

 

Yes, there are centipedes. There are literally millions of different designs for life forms on the Earth. Aside from the ability to think in abstracts, there's not a whole lot of difference between a human and a rat, genetically speaking. That ability to think in abstracts has very little to do with the physiology of a human being.

 

We'd STILL be able to think critically if you substituted our arms for tentacles.

 

We'd still be able to think critically if you substituted our feet for them funny flipper things that seals have,

 

We'd still be able to think critically if we had tails, leopard spots, the face of a donkey or the body of a raccoon.

 

The point is that we didn't become the dominant species based upon our physical appearance. There are an almost endless number of modifications that could, in an evolutionary sense, have made humans even better at surviving, and we have our current shape merely by one in a billion chance.

 

'Aliens', in the traditional sense, mimic our own physiology almost exactly... for that to happen they would have had to follow exactly the same path, with virtually zero deviations, to come up with a shape that looks, to all intents and purposes, like a small, stripped down human being.

 

The chances of that happening are so remote as to be inconceivable.

 

Literally, they would have had to follow the same path... the annihilation of superpredators (Dinosaurs in the Gulf of Mexico Meteor Impact) at exactly the right moment for..., the rise of small lemurs, the survival of multiple mass-extinctions, the transition from forest to grasslands, the transition from grasslands to temperate, the transition from basic survival skills to the ability to problem solve. Physiologically they would have had to follow the exact same path. Fins appearing, fins transitioning to limbs, limbs sprouting fingers, joints in exactly the same places, eyes in exactly the same places, ears and nose in exactly the same orientation, chest, hands, feet, toes.... I'm assuming you can see the sheer scale of the unlikeliness of this occurring.....

 

Why wouldn't a giant, sentient centipede have made it to abstract thought first?

 

Whatever Greys are, assuming they exist, they're not the result of billions of years of evolutionary chance.

 

In essence, they're a stripped down human. A human lacking all the unnecessary stuff.

 

Hair... not needed.

 

5 fingers... not needed.

 

6' height? not needed.

 

And because they're artificial, they're not going to be needing a cock, that's for sure.

 

Even we, marginally smart monkeys, are at the stage where we're fucking around with biological creations. There's a mouse running around with a giant ear somewhere, I'm sure you've seen it.

 

In another few hundred years, biological androids will be able to perform the tasks that mechanicals do today. And because they're manufactured.... we won't be building cocks onto them.

 

Except, as I've mentioned, in Japan.

 

Wasn't one of the less outlandish explanations for the 'greys' that they were laboratory monkeys, whose stomachs became swollen and distended because of the massive pressure drop/increase (I forget which), and they had suffered terrible burns in the crash, leaving them looking all hairless and weird?

 

Sure I read or watched this somewhere.

[Ke1t]

Wasn't one of the less outlandish explanations for the 'greys' that they were laboratory monkeys, whose stomachs became swollen and distended because of the massive pressure drop/increase (I forget which), and they had suffered terrible burns in the crash, leaving them looking all hairless and weird?

 

Sure I read or watched this somewhere.

 

I've heard various explanations. Monkeys was definitely one. They've also been crash test dummies and, get this, retarded children... I'm not shitting you... as a result of Stalin capturing Joseph Mengele, and having him experiment on Russian kids for... i forget what reason.

 

That last one sounds a lot like an episode of The Tick, so if I were to be forced to choose from those 3 theories, I'm going with The Tick.

 

[The Oxford Don]

I've heard various explanations. Monkeys was definitely one. They've also been crash test dummies and, get this, retarded children... I'm not shitting you... as a result of Stalin capturing Joseph Mengele, and having him experiment on Russian kids for... i forget what reason.

 

That last one sounds a lot like an episode of The Tick, so if I were to be forced to choose from those 3 theories, I'm going with The Tick.

 

 

 

Sending retarded children on secret space missions = WIN.

 

I'm only surprised that Danny Boyle didn't try to incorporate this into his tribute to all things howlingly weird on Friday night...

[The Boofon]

yeah i thought terra meant land...ie a terranium...something you put a land dwelling pet in

 

so, basically...im right in saying that something from the sea cant be terrestrial?

 

 

No. What is there at the bottom of the sea?

 

Land me hearty.