White House Denies UFO Contact

[Dalisclock]

Well, at least the Birthers aren't accusing Obama of being an alien.

Yet.

Don't Give Them Ideas!

 

[Treblaine]

When it comes to a lot of people doing dumb things we have far more worrying examples:
-twilight
-creationism
-justin bieber
-transformers movies
-other popular things that i think suck

I'm a Christian. I will thank you not to make fun of Creationism or call it a "dumb, worrying issue".

Sorry, but Creationism IS dumb/worrying because Creationism IS trying to impose religious faith onto Science, it corrupts and abuses the scientific process so as to make it completely unworkable. It is very distinct from the private belief that the earth was created in 6 days (with one day to rest or whatever) by magical/divine means. Creationism is the subversive political force of bending the scientific and education establishment to this dogma. I am not "making fun" of creationism, it is a very serious threat to the teaching of science in America, and frankly schools around the world.

I respect and tolerate people's religious beliefs in-and-of-themselves (people can believe all sort of crazy things, look at how many people play the lottery) but not when they try to subvert the teaching of science or in other ways force their beliefs on others. Same goes for Christians persecuting homosexuals, I won't tolerate that even if your god decrees that Sodomites must be put to death.

I don't care what you do in your temple, that is your personal freedom. But don't kick the door into MY science lab, or troll scientific forums!

 

[Treblaine]

double post

 

[craftomega]

What?? Are they kidding? There are aliens everywhere! Texas has a huge problem with aliens at the moment.

Lol, most of the states and even canada are having a big issue with them.....

I have no clue how they are getting up here...

 

[Agayek]

I still think Science Fiction is wrong in making humans the technologically weakest race in most scenarios. Sure, it always plays to the narrative tension but on the real scale of things, I don't think that out ability to wipe out a pretty big planet and its seven billion inhabitants (that's us) a couple thousand times over speaks for our peacefulness and especially modesty when it comes to weapons technology. I'd even go so far as to claim that our weapons technology (including things like delivery mechanisms for nuclear weapons) is several decades ahead of many areas of civil technology (especially less well-observes areas in for example medical research).

So yeah, we are definitely the Klingons.

We are very much an aggressive and warlike species, and as a result of that our weapons technology is several orders of magnitude above and beyond tech in other areas.

That said, you're assuming the same won't hold true for other species, and that is demonstrably unlikely. The only reason humanity owns the planet like we do is that we are the meanest mother fuckers out there. We are alive only because our ancestors were willing to do anything and everything to kill everything else.

The same will almost certainly hold true elsewhere. The only place a truly "pacifistic" society will ever be able to flourish is a place without predators, and in such a place, predators will evolve. It's unlikely the technological progress of humanity will exactly mirror that of an alien species', but the propensity for weapons tech being the most researched and advanced is unlikely to be terribly different.

Not to mention all of our weapons are designed to ultimately affect ground targets. We don't have anti-orbital or even a relatively strong anti-air arsenal, simply because we don't need it. An alien attack would be very much bad news all around.

 

[Korolev]

We're never going to contact aliens.

How would they find us? Space is vast. Incredibly vast. Most of you have NO IDEA how large it really is. We're talking about LIGHT YEARS. THOUSANDS IF NOT MILLIONS OF LIGHT YEARS. As in, it would take LIGHT ITSELF hundreds of thousands if not millions of years to travel far enough. That's how big it is. have you see what our planet looks like if you travel as far out as Jupiter? It looks like a dot like any other. Go past Saturn and you can't even SEE the Earth anymore.

There is a huge, vast black inky NOTHING that separates solar systems and even larger ones that separate galaxies. Life is rare - it's complicated and it requires certain conditions, so it's rare. Finding a planet with INTELLIGENT life is going to be even rarer. Finding a planet with intelligent life that has progressed to space travel is even rarer than that. And the odds of your species existing at the same time as that other species is even rarer still!

And out of the BILLIONS of galaxies, EACH ONE containing BILLIONS of stars, holding who the hell knows how many planets, the odds of an alien species finding us (while we are still around to greet them) are vanishingly small. You're more likely to win the lotto 10000 times over than meet an Alien species.

Anyone with a real appreciation of the distance and size of the universe knows this. We're not going to meet them. Ever.

Finding intelligent life in the universe is like looking for a needle in a haystack - oh and the haystack is the SIZE OF THE SUN. And there's only 400 or so needles.

 

[Coldster]

Majestic 12? Don't you mean MI6? Majestic Intelligence Sector 16? *game reference*

OT: I'm actually very surprised that 17,000 people signed a petition for a cause as weird and pointless as this. Why can't those people sign a petition for something much more important? Soon, hopefully.

 

[Treblaine]

So, out of curiosity, do you Americans know now who murdered your president Kennedy?

Yeah. It was Lee Harvey Oswald.

Kennedy was shot by a deluded loner with a gun, just like James Garfield and William McKinley.

There is a long list of petty men killing or almost killing US Presidents:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_assassination_attempts_and_plots#Abraham_Lincoln_2

Nothing remarkable or inexplicable about Oswald.

 

[Blind Sight]

Clearly the majority of people who signed the petition will continue to push for more government statements, because they really won't accept anything except a complete confession of alien life on earth.

Personally I've got no real opinion on it, haven't seen any strong evidence for alien life on earth but governments are sneaky little bastards so I'm weary. Severely doubt it though.

 

[SnakeoilSage]

The Government never lies to us. Hell, even when the Atomic Bomb was being made they didn't cover that up. They were being completely clean and open about that.

And yet the truth got out. So either they don't know anything about aliens or this is the first secret in the history of the American government that they have been able to successfully keep.

 

[Snotnarok]

If aliens did know about us and were capable of easily traveling the stars, why the hell would they stop by OUR planet and talk? That's like any one of us stopping by an ant hill and trying to talk to them.

We're a tiny race who can't get past our own religious views and xenophobia, why would ANYONE visit?

Didn't scientists go crazy when they found out that Mars had some tiny frozen bacteria in a lake somewhere? Or maybe it was when scientists found out that Mars once had water and strongly suggested that bacteria or some teeny tiny thingy had lived there at some point.
If the Aliens are smart enough to not only create a telescope of some sort that can see our planet from theirs and a spaceship powerful enough to reach our planet, is it that much of a stretch to assume they don't give a crap about our xenophobic ways and would be just as excited about the prospect of talking to intelligent life from another planet as we would be.

Not when said race nukes eachother, kills eachother and is overall destroying their own planet. If anything, I wouldn't be surprised if they either steered clear or killed us to stop us from screwing things up as it is.

 

[Viirin]

An official statement doesn't exactly prove anything. The US government is not to be trusted, especially if files and evidence of UFOs are top-secret. You want to prove that there really are no aliens, open Area 51, Groom Lake, Cheyenne Mountain, and all the other so-called "black facilities" to tourism, because only showing that these are not harbouring alien corpses or technology will reasonably quell this sort of suspicion.

Doubtful. If I know my conspiracy theorists, then they'll just say they moved it somewhere else. Or come up with a new 'alien' location.

 

[Scars Unseen]

If aliens do exist, and they possess the technology to traverse the distance between stars, galaxies, dimensions or even universes, then why oh why do they still have to shove a hose up someone's arsehole to get medical data? Hell, even we humans have the "camera pill" colonoscopy now. Surely they could whip out a tricorder and just scan us without all the invasive anal spelunking.

They couldpull out a tricorder, but where's the fun in that?

 

[Pyramid Head]

If first contact was already established or if we actually did find aliens, then there would be way more people talking about it than the few obscure nutjobs who spend more time accusing people of being sheep than presenting evidence. I don't think we've found aliens or made contact with UFOs. I mean, think. Aliens who mastered faster than light technology would want to meet other intelligent species. We're on a planet populated by suicidal retards who waste resources and pollute their own ecosystem while conclusive proof exists that we're killing ourselves, yet despite that some people claim everything is fine.

No way aliens would make contact with us. We're morons.

 

[SidingWithTheEnemy]

[...]
Nothing remarkable or inexplicable about Oswald.

Maybe, but I'm siding with Kevin Costner here... ;-)

 

[Gilhelmi]

While I make it a point to distrust anything and everything the government says, I have to admit that I'm with them on this one. The odds of intelligent life visiting our planet, then not doing anything while here is extremely slim. The only way the trip would be worth the expense is if they came and cleansed our planet of all life before stripping it of resources. Since we're all still alive, it's safe to conclude that we haven't been visited by aliens.

But they did do something. They probed a few people to find out about their diets, general health, and other interesting facts about humans. Then they did some geological studies to see what was here. Then {hopefully) completed their research and went home.

It is quite possible that ET has a Prime Directive of some sort, so why talk to us.

 

[Aprilgold]

"Here come the MEN IN BLACK".....

GALAXY DEFENDERS!


AWWW YEEAHH!

No, aliens aren't real, its a needle in a fucking haystack effect going on. As far as we know, the universe is infinite, which means that we could be infinitely away from another species. EVEN IF they were close enough, what makes us think their more then cavemen in intellect. The chances that the alien species would be anymore then THAT and be within range is so god damn slim that no piece of paper could penetrate it.

 

[Agayek]

But they did do something. They probed a few people to find out about their diets, general health, and other interesting facts about humans. Then they did some geological studies to see what was here. Then {hopefully) completed their research and went home.

It is quite possible that ET has a Prime Directive of some sort, so why talk to us.

The problem with that logic is that the small amount of information they retrieved isn't nearly worth the mammoth amount of resources required to make the trip. Just coming from the nearest star takes more energy than the entire weekly output of the entire world. It is a truly massive amount of resources to spend to come by and gather some vague statistics then spend the same amount of resources going back home.

In short, the cost outweighs the benefits by several orders of magnitude. Thus, it hasn't happened.