UFOs

[Sam Slater]

[quote]If one makes the effort to look up the evidence, one has no sensible alternative but to conclude that these things are either extraterrestrial (which would include, I suppose, the bizarre scenarios of them coming from the bottom of the sea or from within the earth even) or extradimensional (which includes the dimension of time), regardless of what preconceived notions one might have had.[/quote]

Load of tripe.

'you have no alternative to conclude...' ? There are lots of alternatives.

Military testing and people who lie to persuade others of their fantastical wishes are two 'alternatives' I can think of straight away.

'If one makes the effort to look up the evidence,...' ? Many have; only a few have concluded extraterrestrial goings on. Asking people to look up the evidence is an old chestnut the creationists use. Their 'evidence' of Noah's flood is all the dead dinosaur bones we find.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Wiseman A: "I wonder why people once thought the Sun went around the Earth?"

(not so)Wiseman B: "Well that's because it looks that way. The Sun comes up over those mountains in the east and sets over those trees to the west."

Wiseman A: "So how would they think it looked if the Earth moved around the Sun, like it does?"
-------------------------------------------------------------------

And talking of evidence: Aren't you the one who rubbished the evidence of man-made global warming; aren't you the one who disbelieves the evidence about passive smoking being a danger? But a few dubious authors scrape a little evidence together to support their belief of alien life shooting across our skies and you all of a sudden think this is the only creditable conclusion!

Oh, you never replied to my previous posting, replying to you, which I thought were common sense points.

I'm trying my best not to laugh, Steve, but I'm inclined to encourage you to just stick to playing the violin.

[andy at handiwork]

Sweet voice of reason and rationality.

[eroticartist]

SteveR,
Flying saucers are definitely extra terrestial because if they were terrestial military the secret would have leaked out long ago. In any case they would have been detected by radar. On the other hand there appears to be a conspriracy among terrestial governments to deny their existence.
Mike Freeman

[eroticartist]

SteveR,
Can you persuade me to get my head around "extradimensional hypothesis"?
Mike Freeman.

[Steve R]

Mike,

I don't know about "persuade", as I don't particularly espouse the idea myself, but merely offer it as one of the possibilities for an origin of these vehicles.

Now, many scientists currently adhere to the principle that there exist spatial dimensions, in addition to the three which are perceived by our senses. The latest mathematics seem to require this, and certain experiments carried out by physicists appear to bear this out.

Some physicists and mathematicians even suggest that there may exist - side-by-side with ours - many other universes, completely imperceptible to our senses.

I suspect, however, that it is far more likely that these things simply come from elsewhere in our own universe, and in our own three spatial dimensions. To those who would pooh-pooh this with regard to the seemingly vast distances involved vis-a-vis the laws of physics, I would retort along the lines of: the intelligences responsible for these things would be unlikely to be using our physics - they would be more likely using their physics.

[andy at handiwork]

Steve R wrote:

the intelligences responsible for these things would
> be unlikely to be using our physics - they would be more likely
> using their physics.
>
>

Now there's a concept, pick'n'mix physics.

[Steve R]

Mike,

these things have been detected by our radar on many, many occasions.

During the Belgium 'flap' of 1989/90, F-16 fighters were scrambled to intercept a huge, black, triangular object, which had been tracked by several different radar stations. They were unable to accomplish their objective, due to the extreme speed and manoeuvrability of the object.

[Steve R]

'Our physics' refers, naturally, to that branch of science, limited by our understanding of it at the present time.

So, 'our physics' is considerably more advanced than the physics of Galileo.

Likewise, the physics of another race of beings might well be more advanced than ours.

[andy at handiwork]

The physics remains the same, no matter how much we know about it.

[Steve R]

Well, of course, and 'our physics' refers to what we presently understand about physics.

'Their physics' refers to what they (whoever they are) understand about physics.