Do you believe aliens exist?

Do you believe aliens exist?

  • Yes

    Votes: 351 69.1%

  • No

    Votes: 105 20.7%

  • Other

    Votes: 52 10.2%
  • Total voters
    508
Mariner said:
There is no informal definition of a theory. Something is either a theory or it isn't.



Accepted as fact and cannot be refuted = proven. Refinement is always part of a theory when new evidence comes to light.



The theory of gravity is observable, verifiable and measurable. It is a proven fact. Small refinements do not invalidate the theory.



Both were hypotheses until evidence was produced to verify the hypothesis. When that evidence could not be refuted by peer review, they became theories.



Which I have stated several times.



All hypotheses are unproven. When proven, they become theories.



Curiosity leads to a hypothesis becoming a theory. Speculation remains unproven.



It's not my definition.



That's an opinion, not a hypothesis. Who are the "we" he references, and who is he?



You mean speculation has increased. To formulate a hypothesis, the axioms of the hypothesis need to be defined. They haven't.

www.scirp.org

Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, Extraterrestrial Life, Plasmoids, Shape Shifters, Replicons, Thunderstorms, Lightning, Hallucinations, Aircraft Disasters, Ocean Sightings

As documented by NASA space shuttle films and detailed in this report, self-illuminating, pulsating, plasma-like UAP/UFO (“plasmoids”) have multiple shapes and sizes, are attracted to electromagnetic activity, and travel at different velocities from different directions, making 90 to 180-degree...
www.scirp.org www.scirp.org

You read what you wanted into that abstract. Do you understand the nature of plasma and plasmoids? In WW2 they were known as Foo Fighters. In other words, static electricity. A lightning strike is so hot that plasma is formed from the air. And it's static electricity. That is not a hypothesis either.

Thunderstorms are major sources of positive charges directed to the ionosphere and likely provide excitatory charges to plasmoids congregating above and those descending within these raging storms. Thunderstorms also provide negative charges to Earth’s surface, which is surrounded by insulating lower atmospheres that are also positively charged, i.e. the stratosphere and troposphere [4] [5]; whereas the ocean surface under white water and turbulent conditions may develop a positive charge
Click to expand...
You’re clearly very sure of your definitions, and that’s fine — I’m not trying to argue that UFOs/aliens are “proven” or that speculation equals evidence.

I’m also happy to admit I’m a layperson, not a plasma physicist. That’s exactly why I quoted an article instead of pretending I can derive field equations on a forum. The Joseph et al. paper may turn out to be wrong or over-interpretive, but it is doing what science normally does at the edges:
– start from observed patterns (shapes, motions, interactions),
– propose a model (plasmoids / plasma structures with certain behaviours),
– and invite others to test, criticise, or refine it.
That’s more than “just opinion”, even if it’s early-stage and imperfect.

On the theory/hypothesis issue: I think we might just be talking past each other a bit. In practice, even very strong theories remain provisional — they’re the best current explanatory frameworks, not untouchable sacred facts. Gravity, evolution, germ theory… all of them have evolved and been refined as new evidence arrived, which is exactly what you also acknowledge. So I don’t disagree with you that hypotheses are unproven and theories are better-supported; my only point was that science lives on a spectrum, not in two boxes labelled “nonsense” and “settled forever”.

As for plasmas, foo fighters, ball lightning, etc.: yes, they’re real, yes, they’re fascinating, and no, I’m not claiming “that proves aliens”. My point was much smaller and more boring: the hypothesis space for UAP is broadening beyond “it’s all misidentified planes” on one side and “it’s little green men” on the other. Some of that work will survive scrutiny, most of it won’t — but curiosity is what turns the tiny minority into tomorrow’s “of course that’s real, we’ve always known that”.

I’m perfectly comfortable leaving UFOs and aliens in the hypothesis bucket for now. I’d just rather keep an open file than declare, in advance, that nothing interesting can possibly ever come from looking.
 
Jings said:
On the theory/hypothesis issue: I think we might just be talking past each other a bit. In practice, even very strong theories remain provisional
Click to expand...

Theories are proven and supported by facts obtained through repeatable observations that yield the same results. They are never provisional. They may be refined by new information, but the basis remains.

Jings said:
I’m perfectly comfortable leaving UFOs and aliens in the hypothesis bucket for now. I’d just rather keep an open file than declare, in advance, that nothing interesting can possibly ever come from looking.
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Looking is observation. It results in a hypothesis which becomes a theory if found repeatable and yields the same results.
 
Mariner said:
Theories are proven and supported by facts obtained through repeatable observations that yield the same results. They are never provisional. They may be refined by new information, but the basis remains.



Looking is observation. It results in a hypothesis which becomes a theory if found repeatable and yields the same results.
Click to expand...

At this rate, if aliens are watching this thread, they’re probably filing us under: “Intelligent, but still arguing about definitions.”
 
Jings said:
At this rate, if aliens are watching this thread, they’re probably filing us under: “Intelligent, but still arguing about definitions.”
Click to expand...

That implies the probability that aliens can reach Earth, which is statistically close to 0 and is explained very well in this thread. It also implies aliens know the Roman alphabet and are connected to the internet via an ISP.
 
wizardofid said:
Let’s put it this way, the odds of complex or intelligent life existing are insanely low. The more you look into it, the more it feels like pure cosmic luck that we’re even here.


Humans, in some evolved form, have only been around for about 6 to 9 million years. Earth has been orbiting the Sun for 4.6 billion years, and life first showed up roughly 3.5 billion years ago. Complex life didn’t appear until much later, around 580 million years ago during the Ediacaran period. That was followed by the Cambrian Explosion about 541 million years ago, when life diversified at an incredible pace. Some newer evidence even hints that complex life might go back over 2 billion years, which really changes how we view evolution’s timeline.


Here’s the eerie part. Earth’s history is filled with mass extinctions. Life has been reset multiple times, sometimes every 26 to 30 million years by some estimates. Each time, almost everything gets wiped out, and evolution starts over from small surviving pockets. As the solar system stabilized, these events slowed down to about once every 80 million years. The last big one was 66 million years ago, the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs and around 75 percent of all life. Statistically, we’re kind of due for another.


For life to evolve and advance, you need ridiculously long, stable periods between these resets. Even small disruptions like a nearby supernova, massive volcanic activity, an asteroid impact, or being flung out of your solar system can ruin everything.


People really underestimate how finely balanced Earth is. We’ve got a large molten iron core that powers a strong magnetic field through the geodynamo effect, which protects us from deadly solar winds and cosmic radiation. That same field also helps preserve our atmosphere, something Mars lost when its core cooled.


Then there’s our moon. It’s the fifth largest in the solar system, but proportionally the biggest compared to its planet. That’s huge. It stabilizes our axial tilt, which gives us seasons and keeps the climate steady. Without that tilt, Earth might be a frozen rock on one side and a scorched wasteland on the other. The moon is slowly drifting away, about 3.8 centimeters per year, but it’ll take billions of years before it truly escapes.


And that’s just local stability. You also need galactic stability. Stars explode, radiation storms sweep across space, and galaxies collide. The Milky Way itself is on a collision course with Andromeda in about 4 to 5 billion years. Luckily, stars are so far apart that the odds of a direct hit are tiny, but it still shows how fragile our setup is.


When you add all this up, Earth starts looking like an astronomical miracle. The right distance from the Sun, the right size, the right atmosphere, the right moon, the right core, everything lined up just right. This is basically the Rare Earth hypothesis: microbial life might be common in the universe, but complex, intelligent life like us is extremely rare because the conditions have to be absurdly precise.


So maybe there’s other life out there, maybe tons, maybe none. The odds point both ways. But when you realize how many things had to go exactly right for us to exist, it’s hard not to think we hit the cosmic jackpot.


And then comes the big philosophical question. What’s the point of all this? Are we here by sheer dumb luck, or is there some deeper purpose? We try to make sense of it, but the truth is, we don’t really know, and that drives us nuts. We crave order, meaning, and patterns. But making stuff up just to feel better doesn’t help. Sometimes you just have to sit back, look at the universe, and admit it’s hostile, unpredictable, and unbelievably special that we even get to be a small part of it.
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It was once said the chances of anything coming from Mars is a million to one,
 
Brian_G said:
Don't worry, they'll still dream up some way to discredit it...
Click to expand...
If you've been following the stories on the Nazca mummies, Buga spheres, UAP "dog whistle" and mystery drones over USA and Europe, including those gliding through the ocean, you'd know that authorities worldwide have lost control of the cover-up and we're heading for something inevitable.
 
Jings said:
If you've been following the stories on the Nazca mummies, Buga spheres, UAP "dog whistle" and mystery drones over USA and Europe, including those gliding through the ocean, you'd know that authorities worldwide have lost control of the cover-up and we're heading for something inevitable.
Click to expand...

Best to get some tinfoil. Jirre my bru
 
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