The Problem of Distance for ET

[TClaeys]

The biggest problem facing ET Hypothesis seems to be the enormous distances involved. How could "they" travel from one planet to another, especially when considering that they are not remotely close to us?

So, many speculate a multi-dimensional aspect to their travel. That they come from another universe altogether and somehow find themselves overlapping and interacting with ours. While I entertain this notion and have some considerable favor for it, we still have virtually no evidence for such a construct. It just seems that this could be the case.

But one question: Are we ignoring the possibility that such space travellers are immortal??

I mean if we evaluate our species and technological uprise we see many indicators that such a thing may be possible in the future. We have mapped our entire genome. Gene therapy and manipulation our now within our grasp and will be utilized more and more as they fit out needs. And we will certainly venture farther and farther into space. Science is currently and has historically extended life, even with the absence of such crucial data as detailed genetics. If an intelligent civilization on a far away planet is leagues ahead of us in this biotechnological respect, then couldn't we expect some universal, or at least galactic, dispersal?? That is, of course, assuming thay have engineered themselves in such a fashion.

Couldn't we expect that they had mastered local solar system travel to an extent that they felt, not only comfortable, but confident in longer travels. Confident in acquiring resources along the way, in protecting and concealing themselves from the unexpected dangers that lurk in the shadowy recesses of space. Even for millions or even a billion years at a time, never to return (or perhaps to return). Indispensible life forms sent out to explore and who knows what else. I can't say what their exact motives might be, but this is unimportant in this thread.

But it seems to me that the ET hypothesis is still a possibility and that distance isn't neccessarily the brick wall it is made out to be. And we all know that the ET hypothesis takes some whacks around here.

At least I'm glad to have an arena to voice questions like these. It's not something I can just casually discuss with my wife over dinner. Thanks for any thoughts you might have.

 

[showflake]

It's all a matter of accepting or rejecting what they usually say themselves. Their claims support the multidimensional hypothesis. If one accepts such claims as true, the answer is right there.
Of course, if we assume they are not sincere, or that abductees are not sincere, then we can get into a large number of theories, one of them being this.
But if you can travel near light speed, you don't need to be immortal to get anywhere.
If you can travel at say 0.999999999... % speed of light you can reach any distant galaxy of your choice in a less than one second at full speed. You are only limited by the age of the universe.
Of course, assuming you have no way of messing with gravity, you need to limit acceleration to 1g of your local planets gravity, and that gives you a couple of years, to travel to any point in the universe.
Of course by the time you get there, it might be the end of the entire universe.

That is, if mr. Lorentz is right about the way time and speed are related

 

[TClaeys]

It's all a matter of accepting or rejecting what they usually say themselves. Their claims support the multidimensional hypothesis. If one accepts such claims as true, the answer is right there.

But if you can travel near light speed, you don't need to be immortal to get anywhere.
If you can travel at say 0.999999999... % speed of light you can reach any distant galaxy of your choice in a less than one second at full speed. You are only limited by the age of the universe.
universe.

Could you point me to some accounts of beings saying that they are from another universe or dimension?? I'm not very versed in these accounts, I guess it's too strange and I think some of it, perhaps a large amount, is not happening at all. So I haven't spent much time reading abduction accounts. But The Hill incident involves the star map, indicating a planetary system.

Also, of course, time dilation (travel at speed of light) could be a way to get here as well (without immortality) and I understand that, but as far as science knows, there isn't any evidence that we could ever do this either. The closer we get to that speed, we need more and more energy approaching an infinite amount. Not to say that shouldn't be considered.

But there is a trend for life extension and genetic manipulation and we can foresee the possibilities, at least I think. But we don't have any trends towards approaching the speed of light with space travel. Again, not that it isn't theoretically possible. Thanks.

 

[skunkape]

There could be multiple answers. Some may very well be interplanetary. There's no way of knowing that all 'Visitors' are coming from the same place. Based on what I've seen, it's more like what some call other-dimensional. I think it could be something more like unknown states of matter. They are in this dimension, whatever that means, just not made of the same stuff we bump into under normal conditions. Our sensory organs have not evolved to perceive these other states of matter because they usually are of no significance to the survival of our atom-based, mammalian vessel of consciousness.

 

[showflake]

The Hill case is one with very little information, It's just investigated well, but it's pretty much a dead end

But in no way does the Hill case exclude multidimensional theory, the usual story is, that they are from this or that direction in the sky, yet shifted somehow
from our reality. And also often claim that our time is meaningless to them, that they are somehow outside our time. And there is also a lot of underground activity too, a lot of abductees end up underground, but also shifted from our reality.
So, I think all of the theories are in part correct, that they are from other planets, that they are from other dimensions, that they are from our afterlife-reality, that they are underground etc.

One good case with a lot of reliable information (IMO at least), is the Betty Andreasson case (she is like a tape recorder under hypnosis, you can take her back many times and get exact descriptions of the same event down to little details, she has a 100% perfect consistency, she is bullet proof), and also Dorothy Izatt case (which was also discussed on paracast)

 

[showflake]

As for energy requirements. It's not an absolute amount of energy that's a problem, but the ratio of the mass you want to keep with you , and the mass that you want to convert to energy.

You could reach light with the energy of a single AA battery, that is if your payload was less than the mass of one electron.

So you need your fuel to be a number of times larger than the mass of your ship and crew in order to reach a certain percentage of light speed.

That is if you have a way of converting all the energy you consume into motion, which is another problem (photon pressure methods gets close to that I think)

I highly doubt this is the way any of the UFO's work, because it's so complicated, and the end result is not so rewarding as their own propulsion seems to be

One thing is that in order to have a fuel that can convert itself 100% to energy, is that your only choice is antimatter. And if you have antimatter atoms, again, you would end up with a whole bunch of neutrinos, and just a third of it would be radiation.
In order to convert all your fuel just to radiation (energy), you need electrons and positrons, and you can't store them in any large quantity, because of the pressure caused by electrostatic forces.
That gives you a huge craft, and I mean like, a bacteria riding a bus, even if you could generate such strong forces to contain all that charge.

So it's all just unpractical.

I mean in theory it's possible to travel this way to the end of the universe, but the ship would just be ridiculously large and fragile, and it's quite possible that producing such a vessel would result in engineering requirements that would just hit a brick wall (like producing force to store cubic kilometers of electrons) etc.

It would be much easier to store neutral atoms , providing they are diamagnetic, but then again, two thirds of your fuel goes to neutrinos (first to pions, muons etc, but the end result is neutrinos after a couple of meters of travel of the decaying particles, or a fraction of a second)
which limits the maximum speed you can attain.
The neat thing about neutral atoms is , you can store them as BEC condensate, which in itself is like using winrar or winzip to store fuel.
And furthermore you can transport that matter as a beam, you can make an atom "laser" with it.
But again, all this up to a certain percentage of light speed, you can't reach 0.999999999 with neutral antimatter.

Oh yea, no to mention that, a little rock you can hold between fingers would destroy the entire ship at that speed, and also, at that speed, space , even interstellar space is not vacuum at all. Even if you have a density of hydrogen at say one atom per cubic meter, at that speed, you would have a wind of hydrogen literally , as if when you drive a plane. Think of the erosion of your hull , being hit by a stream of gas flowing near light speed (relative to you). There would also be all kinds of reactions on your hull identical to those in a particle accelerator.


But all this is irrelevant. You take one look at one of those UFO's and you can tell they don't work this way. Even if they did use this kind of classic rocket acceleration and travel, they would literally have to step out of this dimension, to avoid the effects of particles hitting the ship.

A ship reaching 0.999999.... of light speed using charged particles, would look like a human riding a hollow moon (made out of thin shell) sized object full of electrons and positrons, which is ridiculous.


One thing I keep hearing over and over and over again, is that these guys have some kind of crystals in their ships, that somehow tune into these invisible interstellar rivers of energy flowing between stars, or something like that. That plus, bending space and time to reach their destination.
And then there are claims (made by certain beings in various cases), that some of them use their own mental or spiritual energy to power the ship.
In either case, it has to be something our physics can't understand today.

 

[Tommy Allison]

I do not believe that a race of beings with superior technology, especially technology that defies all logic, and the laws of physics we know, will have any problems with distance or time.

Imagine how the native Americans must have felt when the first European stepped off his boat, and told them that he had sailed around the world. The native Americans had canoes. The Europeans had giant sailing vessels.

It's the same thing with humans. We have a space shuttle, and it flies around the earth. They have space craft that can visit other worlds. We're the quaint little Amish, to their Maserati Jet Setters.

 

[AnnetteMarie]

But if you can travel near light speed, you don't need to be immortal to get anywhere.
If you can travel at say 0.999999999... % speed of light you can reach any distant galaxy of your choice in a less than one second at full speed.

okay, I don't understand that. it takes light from the Sun 8 minutes, plus/minus a few seconds, to reach Earth. so, how can you get to any galaxy in less than a second?

 

[dorkbot]

But one question: Are we ignoring the possibility that such space travellers are immortal??

I think only the soundbite debunker types avoid bringing such ideas into the discussion. There has been plenty of discussion on ideas like this elsewhere, in sci-fi literature for sure. Given the kinds of ideas humans think might be workable at some point in the future and considering the reported technical abilities of whatever they are, the idea of some sort of von Neumann probe seems worth keeping around.

Consider beings capable of sending out a fleet of self-replicating ships for galactic colonization. If they can build something like that they might be able to simply upload their consciousness to some kind of computer and just have the ship fabricate them a new body whenever they want to hop out and explore a bit. I suppose this is what the Cylons are doing but the idea precedes BSG by half a century.

From wikipedia:

In 1981, Frank Tipler<sup id="cite_ref-Tipler_2-0" class="reference"></sup> put forth an argument that extraterrestrial intelligences do not exist based on von Neumann probes. Given even a moderate rate of replication and the history of the galaxy, such probes should already be common throughout space and thus, we should have already encountered them. Because we haven't, this shows that extraterrestrial intelligences do not exist.

His argument seems to be overlooking a certain something.

Anyways, if they are physical in the same sense as you and I then I would think that very long life spans should be possible with advanced technology but "immortal" doesn't seem plausible for an organic being. Functional immortality would seem to require the ability to hop into a brand new body after a bit. Just speculating.

Another assumption in your question is that they are coming here from there. Consider the idea of a von Neumann probe, ending a very long subluminal voyage and parking itself in the asteroid belts millenia ago. It wakes up periodically to see if anything needs fixing. Nuclear detonations might be a buzzing alarm clock that wakes up the probe, tells it to fab some scout ships and go make sure the natives don't tear up the garden.

As to propulsion, until somebody as least as smart as Paul Hill writes up a detailed refutation of his work I'm going to consider his analysis as state of the art. Hill argues that they are somehow directly monkeying with gravity as it is the only possible explanation that fits the all the observations. Hill doesn't speculate much on superluminal travel possibilities but does point out that as you approach the speed of light, time for you and your ship passes much, much slower.

They very well might be inter-dimensional, superluminal capable god-like entities but let's not jump to that conclusion prematurely.

 

[showflake]

okay, I don't understand that. it takes light from the Sun 8 minutes, plus/minus a few seconds, to reach Earth. so, how can you get to any galaxy in less than a second?

When you observe a ray of light traveling from sun to Earth, in such a way that you as the observer are stationary relative to both Earth and Sun, then you will measure that time to be 8 minutes.

But if you started out in the Earths reference frame, and changed towards the reference frame of moving at speed of 99.99999% of the speed of light, relative to Earth's reference frame, then reached a destination at some distant galaxy, and accelerated back to the Earth's reference frame, your internal clock (on your hand) would measure only a short amount of time.
If you are traveling at 99% speed of light your trip would be shortened about 7 times, which means you would reach 7 light years in one year.
If you were traveling at 99.99% of speed of light your time would be shortened 70 times, if you were traveling at 99.99999999 your trip would be 70000 times shorter etc.
The closer you get to 100% of speed of light, the time dilation factor goes into infinity.

But inside the ship you will notice nothing, everything will be normal, the time dilation is only observed when you change the reference frame twice (at acceleration and deceleration) and then compare watches.

The time dilation can simply be derived by simply drawing the time vs. path graph and tilting the axes (distorting the coordinate system) depending on the speed relative to the other reference frame.

And even so, if you travel at 99.9999% of speed of light, and emit light rays around you, they would go away from you both on rear and front of your path at the same speed from your point of view, both at the speed of light.

And yet, only the outside observer would notice that rays in front of you go away from you slower, and the ones behind you faster from you.
But for you yourself, both rays would go equally fast away from you.

This is because nothing is universally simultaneous.
In one reference frame, two events happen at the same time, and in another (at different speed) they are not parallel, and one happens before the other. Same goes for distance and time. Neither distance nor time are universal, nor are any two events universally simultaneous.

It sounds complicated, but when you put it down on paper and draw the graphs, it's very simple, and more logical than the "common sense" mechanics of Newton.

 

[Kevin Daly]

One thing to consider is that space, even interstellar space, is not a perfect vacuum - it's full of gas and gunk - very thinly spread in some cases, but not impossibly so.
So you may be able to pick up the mass you need for anti-matter reactions (and to make your anti-matter) on the way.
It does raise an interesting possibilty: there may be distinct routes between stars or clusters of stars based on the degree to which the vacuum between them is um, vacuumy - presumably the less vacuumy the better.

If zero-point energy pans out then all bets are off, but it's unwise to make assumptions on that basis when we don't even know if there's anything to it in terms of something that could be tapped.

But of course if there is...people often raise objections to the notion of frivolous or frequent trips to the Earth from remote stars because of the "cost": for a sufficiently advanced (or lucky in its scientific discoveries) civilisation there may effectively be no cost at all.

 

[Gareth]

I do not believe that a race of beings with superior technology, especially technology that defies all logic, and the laws of physics we know, will have any problems with distance or time.

BAM! Hit it in one. Ive had arguments with a friend about this before too... all I kept trying to do was get him to accept the reality of the phenomenon (that not all claims of UFO sightings are hoax or misidentification), and all he would do is get stuck on saying "Do you know how far... blah blah, basically our whole maths knowledge would have to be revised".

Yeah well no shit! All knowledge and 'truth' is in a state of transition! Especially at our tender age as a species, something is only true until we learn more and amend out previous assumptions.

Also, what about the notion that when you travel at the speed of light time slows down? So theoretically, you travel to a system 100million light years away and it will feel like an instant trip... (I believe Stan Friedman talks about this phenomenon).

 

[showflake]

One thing to consider is that space, even interstellar space, is not a perfect vacuum - it's full of gas and gunk - very thinly spread in some cases, but not impossibly so.
So you may be able to pick up the mass you need for anti-matter reactions (and to make your anti-matter) on the way.
It does raise an interesting possibilty: there may be distinct routes between stars or clusters of stars based on the degree to which the vacuum between them is um, vacuumy - presumably the less vacuumy the better.

Sorry but antimatter production is a process which consumes energy instead of produces it. You can't make antimatter on the ship because you need at least twice more energy to make an amount of antimatter holding a certain amount of energy. Antimatter production has zero energy net gain. It's only valid as an efficient energy container

 

[showflake]

Also, what about the notion that when you travel at the speed of light time slows down? So theoretically, you travel to a system 100million light years away and it will feel like an instant trip... (I believe Stan Friedman talks about this phenomenon).

We have discussed it earlier in this thread

 

[TClaeys]

and all he would do is get stuck on saying "Do you know how far... blah blah, basically our whole maths knowledge would have to be revised".

Yeah well no shit! All knowledge and 'truth' is in a state of transition! Especially at our tender age as a species, something is only true until we learn more and amend out previous assumptions.

.

This speaks to my point. Do we absolutely have to jump to a change in physics for all this to be happening?? While I didn't know much about Von Neumann probes before Dorkbot mentioned it (thanks), can't we foresee this genre of exploration?? We nearly have it within our grasp given what, a few decades?? A century or 2? Not much considering our short history on this planet.

If time became irrelevant, we would, in a sense, have all the time in the universe. And, sure, time becomes irrelevant with near-luminal speed , but isn't that more conjuring of theoretical magic??

I guess I'm just saying that the problem of distance can be tackled within the 14 billion year history of our universe by travelling significantly less than luminal speed.This is assuming an intelligent agent is able to take in resources for travel needs and bio or technological needs. If a ship travelled at, say, one tenth of the speed of light, they could traverse our galaxy in a million years. And that may sound ridiculous at first. But consider the possibility of suspended consciousness, technological alerts when approaching interesting places, etc (or perhaps a million years of youtube). Now of course I'm doing my own conjuring here, but it sure seems that the exponential technological (and biological) progress will put us in such a situation. And in that case, a million years isn't all too long.

Where is Mike on this thread?? I thought this wouldbe right up his alley.

 

[AnnetteMarie]

The "instantaneous" travel experienced by those aboard the ship is great, for them. If we assume the purpose of this type of travel would be to increase our society's knowledge base, then what would be the point? By the time the travellers made it home, their world would no longer exist as they knew it; mass changes would likely have occurred, and perhaps their world would no longer be inhabited, anyway. So you have a group representing a tiny percentage of their civilization that knows more than we can imagine at this stage of our development, but what would be the purpose? Whom could they share it with? Knowledge for the sake of knowledge is all well and good when you are looking ahead to your career and what you want your place in our society to be, but just to collect it and stay in your ship and keep going around the unverse collecting more because you literally cannot go home again? What could the purpose for such a life be?
I wonder if the answer to that question will, in turn, answer many more questions that remain unanswered.

 

[showflake]

Yes there would be no point, which is why I personally rule out the classic rocket mechanics, when it comes to UFO's.
There is just no way you can use classic rockets (meaning devices which use reaction mass to propel the ship, be it particles or photons or gas or whatever) in any practical way to travel near light speed.
I mean it's possible in theory, but it's just so impractical. Specially because you need more than a year to accelerate to desired speed at 1g.

They must have a way of manipulating gravity, space and time in order to have practical interstellar travel

 

[TClaeys]

The "instantaneous" travel experienced by those aboard the ship is great, for them. If we assume the purpose of this type of travel would be to increase our society's knowledge base, then what would be the point? By the time the travellers made it home, their world would no longer exist as they knew it; mass changes would likely have occurred, and perhaps their world would no longer be inhabited, anyway.

Perhaps there IS no return trip home. This is a "seeding" of the galaxy and beyond. When families travelled out west, they, for all practical purposes, left everything behind. To start anew in a distant unknown place. This has happened throughout history. Great migrations into unexplored worlds with no expectation of return. This would be a similar notion. And in Darwinian fashion, those that were well equipped would continue on. The original planet would become distant ancestors.

We have this embedded desire to survive. It is what life is all about(arguably, ... yes, I understand other things are important of course). It doesn't neccessitate returning anywhere, unless of course that is possible and convenient. If we could somehow "send" out pieces of humanity throughout the galaxy with no possibility of a letter or visit home, we would still do it. It would help ensure the survival of our species (hopefully), even if it meant no ticket back.

 

[AnnetteMarie]

okay, that makes sense, if whomever is visiting has similar "needs" as a species.
BUT, indications are they are gathering information, lots of it. checking out the humans, the flora and fauna, etc. so what are they doing with that info? and if they are collecting all that data it points to an end use for it. again, referring back to knowledge for the sake of knowledge is pretty pointless. ergo, it suggests they are sharing this knowledge with SOMEONE, which may mean they can come and go at will and are not tied to the journey itself in a multi-generational way.

on the other hand, the knowledge may be useful if they are colonizing amongst the stars.

see what I mean about going in circles? whenever I think I have a hint as to a possible maybe perhaps might be purpose or end goal of our "visitors", I come up with a thought that turns the earlier logic on its head.

hence, the headache...:frown:

 

[showflake]

It's good to play with logic and exercise brain, but I see nothing illogical or wrong about the "official" claims of these grays, which is so consistent over a huge number of cases (yes hypnosis is unreliable if the hypnotist is leading, or the subject is unsure, but you can usually tell the case by reading the questions, there are many well performed hypnotic sessions, and you can tell when the subject is confident and consistent with the story)....
which is that this is simply their JOB. They just hang around the Earth for millions of years and perform maintenance , keep records of environmental changes, evolution of species etc.
They call themselves Watchers, or Keepers or Caretakers, or something to that degree. It's just their job, and in many ways they "own" the physical part of us.
Personally I see no reason to doubt those claims, but one has to also be careful, because part of those claims is that there are also those who don't mean us well as the caretakers do.