I find crop circle fascinating... Websites say there's a difference between "real" ones and man-made ones, but I wonder if the man-made ones will become harder to distinguish as the makers get more skilled.

But the last time I looked up crop circles I ended up reading about this guy who supposedly senses all sorts of supernatural things related to crop circles. And can do some psychic(?) stuff. I ended up getting spooked by a ghost photo.

They use my favorite guitarist ever for the music!!! Joe Satriani!! Any Satch fans out there?

Oh, and yes. These designs are very inspiring. Thank god they're on photograph, I love them so much.

I am usually pretty open minded about most things, and given the size of the universe, the idea we are the most evolved species in the universe is ridiculous.  But, the sheer distances involved in traveling from the nearest solar system discounts any idea that aliens are visiting us.  Anything consisting of matter can not travel faster than the speed of light.  Even at the speed of light it would require an incredibly long lifespan to reach this planet.

Last edited by bodhisamaya (2009 May 22, 5:48 pm)

bodhisamaya wrote:

I am usually pretty open minded about most things, and given the size of the universe, the idea we are the most evolved species in the universe is ridiculous.  But, the sheer distances involved in traveling from the nearest solar system discounts any idea that aliens are visiting us.  Anything consisting of matter can not travel faster than the speed of light.  Even at the speed of light it would require an incredibly long lifespan to reach this planet.

That doesn't mean it will never be possible to travel faster than light. It might sound ridiculous, but most things do before they are invented. One technique is the Alcubierre drive, where the idea is that instead of making matter travel faster than light, you make the space around matter travel faster than light. Suddenly, the limitations don't apply in the same way.

Wally wrote:

Tobberoth wrote:

bodhisamaya wrote:

I am usually pretty open minded about most things, and given the size of the universe, the idea we are the most evolved species in the universe is ridiculous.  But, the sheer distances involved in traveling from the nearest solar system discounts any idea that aliens are visiting us.  Anything consisting of matter can not travel faster than the speed of light.  Even at the speed of light it would require an incredibly long lifespan to reach this planet.

That doesn't mean it will never be possible to travel faster than light. It might sound ridiculous, but most things do before they are invented. One technique is the Alcubierre drive, where the idea is that instead of making matter travel faster than light, you make the space around matter travel faster than light. Suddenly, the limitations don't apply in the same way.

Well, it's a bit of a stretch to call a speculative mathematical model a technique.    And, according to serious critiques of this concept, an Alcubierre Drive is required in order to build an Alcubierre Drive.  Quite the paradox, then.

Maybe. It's just an example though. What we think are definite limitations today might not be definite limitations in the future. You can't say "We know stuff X about stuff Y, so that Z thing will never ever work". If we thought like that, most of the great inventions of our time wouldn't exist.

I think we are making a mistake by applying our ideas on physics on extraterrestrials. We know a whole lot, but we already know that there's SO much we can't understand. Quantum physics are still in its infant stages. What we can safely say, however, is that we have never had official contact with extraterrestrials and thus we have no solid proof that they exist. Therefor, talking about extraterrestrials having visited Earth is like you said, dreaming.

Last edited by Tobberoth (2009 May 22, 6:16 pm)

Tobberoth wrote:

Wally wrote:

Tobberoth wrote:

That doesn't mean it will never be possible to travel faster than light. It might sound ridiculous, but most things do before they are invented. One technique is the Alcubierre drive, where the idea is that instead of making matter travel faster than light, you make the space around matter travel faster than light. Suddenly, the limitations don't apply in the same way.

Well, it's a bit of a stretch to call a speculative mathematical model a technique.    And, according to serious critiques of this concept, an Alcubierre Drive is required in order to build an Alcubierre Drive.  Quite the paradox, then.

Maybe. It's just an example though. What we think are definite limitations today might not be definite limitations in the future. You can't say "We know stuff X about stuff Y, so that Z thing will never ever work". If we thought like that, most of the great inventions of our time wouldn't exist.

I think we are making a mistake by applying our ideas on physics on extraterrestrials. We know a whole lot, but we already know that there's SO much we can't understand. Quantum physics are still in its infant stages. What we can safely say, however, is that we have never had official contact with extraterrestrials and thus we have no solid proof that they exist. Therefor, talking about extraterrestrials having visited Earth is like you said, dreaming.

I understand, and that is correct, and it is fine to dream and experiment.  But at the present time we are stuck, until proven otherwise, with the apparent cosmic speed limit.  When we talk about the causes of crop circles, if we want any credibility at all, we need to keep that in mind until someone knocks off Einstein.  That may happen someday, and it's a good idea to keep that in mind.  But until then, when it comes to crop circles, we probably shouldn't be willing to discard the known framework very quickly.

Tobberoth wrote:

Wally wrote:

Tobberoth wrote:

Maybe. It's just an example though. What we think are definite limitations today might not be definite limitations in the future. You can't say "We know stuff X about stuff Y, so that Z thing will never ever work". If we thought like that, most of the great inventions of our time wouldn't exist.

I think we are making a mistake by applying our ideas on physics on extraterrestrials. We know a whole lot, but we already know that there's SO much we can't understand. Quantum physics are still in its infant stages. What we can safely say, however, is that we have never had official contact with extraterrestrials and thus we have no solid proof that they exist. Therefor, talking about extraterrestrials having visited Earth is like you said, dreaming.

I understand, and that is correct, and it is fine to dream and experiment.  But at the present time we are stuck, until proven otherwise, with the apparent cosmic speed limit.  When we talk about the causes of crop circles, if we want any credibility at all, we need to keep that in mind until someone knocks off Einstein.  That may happen someday, and it's a good idea to keep that in mind.  But until then, when it comes to crop circles, we probably shouldn't be willing to discard the known framework very quickly.

I agree, I just don't think we have to go as far as talking about the cosmic speed limit. How about the simple fact that if some form of ships came down and created circles in our fields, wouldn't we notice that, with all the radar and surveying technology we have? WHY would aliens come here and create circles, seemingly out of the blue? I mean, there's so much wrong with thinking aliens created crop circles that I don't think the debate even has to reach a discussion about physics.

Sure.  I would say "apparent cosmic speed limit", anyway.  But as for why we haven't detected them ...

Have you forgotten all about the cloaking device? 

I think, as far as the physics is concerned, it's important to remember that models are not true and false.  Facts are true and false, and models are only more or less accurate.  Scientific theories are not facts, they're models. 

You can imagine in early physics someone weighing a top.  Then, he spun the top to see if there was a change in weight between the top spinning and the top at rest.  He concludes that spinning, or movement, does not change the weight of the top.  It's a good theory.  Saying that "A small amount of movement does not change the weight of the top" or "Spinning the top at between 20 and 40 rotations per second does not change its weight" are bad theories.  They're just not strong statements, so they're not very interesting.

Anyway, it turns out that this theory was only thought to be true because our instruments were way too weak to pick up a change in weight. So, philosophically, the theory was completely wrong--because the fact is that things increase in mass (and therefore weight, other things being kept the same) when you move them.  But actually, it's still a reasonable accurate model for the vast majority of situations in which we find ourselves.  I don't choose to not go to the store thinking "Well, you know, I could go to the store.  But I suppose then I would gain weight.  Not to mention, my car would weigh more than it does right now, and that would use more gas... etc."  In everyday situations the theory "Movement does not increase mass" is a perfectly fine one because we're not in a situation where a high degree of accuracy matters.  So, it's not really false, it's just not accurate.

This is one of the reasons we can continue to use and learn Newton's laws of motion in school.  They're philosophically completely wrong, but they're actually accurate enough to be very useful models.

In other words, it's not like we'll someday realize that the problems with traveling at high speeds that Einstein discovered are going to just disappear.  We've moved things very fast, and even if in some way he was wrong, we know that there's huge engineering hurdles to get around it.  Every time we move something very fast, it seems to increase in mass very quickly after it gets past a certain speed.  Einstein's theory says that as it reaches the speed of light the mass would increase to infinity.  This could be wrong, but the model could still be accurate enough that it would take a huge amount of energy to get anything to move at high speeds.  In other words, even if he's wrong, the model seems accurate enough that it's still a huge engineering hurdle.

On another note, it's important not to have the misconception that evolution necessarily heads towards more intelligent species.  We're no more evolved than cockroaches.  Evolution favors survival in a given environment, nothing more.

Tobberoth wrote:

Well my point was that it might be possible to completely sidestep the limitations we know of today. It may always be impossible to move an object faster than light, but we might come up with other ways. Moving space? Teleporting? Worm holes? Subspace?

We can't know. Like Wally said, it's all speculation, maybe even dreaming, but that's what drives development.

I only meant to point out that those engineering leaps would probably be necessary whether or not Einstein's theory was correct concerning movement at the speed of light.  That is, even if suddenly we realize that it's not impossible to move matter faster than the speed of light, those engineering hurdles towards other ways of movement would still have to be made.

This is important for the discussion because the more complex the engineering hurdles the less likely aliens are to ever come here.  Especially because, as I said, evolution doesn't specifically favor intelligence.

Last edited by Tzadeck (2009 May 22, 7:06 pm)

@jorgebucaran : haha, good video. I sometimes remind myself (I think I heard this somewhere but couldn't say where from), that "if you open your mind too much, it will spill out!".

Personally I believe in UFOs (as in Unidentified Flying Objects), and I believe there are many of a non-natural origin. I think there is plenty of evidence out there, including so many testimonials from highly respected and reliable army and aviation personnel (which strangely, goes completely ignored). Saying that though, I am also undecided whether the best/more serious cases of UFO observations are of objects of human origin or not. There's clearly a lot of military stuff out there that is not disclosed until really necessary, the F-117 plane is often used as an example of that.

I agree that scientists can and should be open minded. The problem is there seems to be invisible walls that block serious investigations from taking place even in the best documented UFO cases. For example the O Hare International Airport case. More recently in January 2008 there was a lot of buzz about UFO observations in Texas. These were later corroborated by volunteers who put up a complete report of radar observations obtained by Freedom of Information Act requests (and only because they were persistent with their requests). Putting up all radar data they have corroborated all the witness observations and have proof that something was going on, including objects changing trajectories in ways not possible by conventional military aircraft. Yet, no investigation by authorities, no follow up. This is old news to any UFO enthusiasts of course.

So personally "open mindedness" on these subjects for me is not so much about considering the technical points, but really about being willing to consider the non-conventional, non status-quo streams of thought.

Back to the crop circle phenomena, isn't it strange that just when these things started to get major attention in the public eye, in the early 1990's, all of a sudden and out of nowhere these 2 old chaps called "Doug and Dave" came out to the media to say how they did all these circles with "just planks and ropes, honest!". Did the media investigate THEIR claims? You bet they didn't. Since then there aren't many "official" crop circle makers, and still no explanation for the "nodes" problem observed in crops as shown in the documentary.

By the way for those interested there is serious research done on the crop circles including photos of plant abnormalities, magnetic materials in soils, etc.

kanjiwarrior wrote:

bodhisamaya wrote:

I am usually pretty open minded about most things, and given the size of the universe, the idea we are the most evolved species in the universe is ridiculous.  But, the sheer distances involved in traveling from the nearest solar system discounts any idea that aliens are visiting us.  Anything consisting of matter can not travel faster than the speed of light.  Even at the speed of light it would require an incredibly long lifespan to reach this planet.

Completely agree. Not to mention the sheer amount of energy and resources it would take to sustain manned travel between those distances. I totally believe that our Galaxy is teaming with life, I refuse to believe that humanity is such a random fluke. However having the ability to travel to earth in spaceships would require some kind of technology so far advanced it would narrow down the possible civilizations that could exist to almost nothing. Although I'm no expert but I watch a lot of sci-fi and discovery channel.

There could always be ever expanding races or nomad type travelers.  A digital race wouldn't need to worry about lifespan. 

Personally I don't think crop circles have anything to do with aliens, but I do think there is a chance we could make contact.

Last edited by cracky (2009 May 24, 10:29 pm)