Are they watching us, even as we speak?

Discussion in 'Astronomy, Exobiology, & Cosmology' started by Ophiolite, Feb 12, 2007.

  1. Ophiolite Valued Senior Member

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    I don't accept UFOs are alien spacecraft intent on studying us primitive Earth people. I subscribe to Sagan's view that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. To date this is lacking.

    However, there is a possibility, some might argue a probability, that aliens have left robotic monitors within the system to study and report on emerging intelligence.

    What I should like to discuss in this thread is where and of what character such monitors might be, and how we might go about locating them. Comments? Suggestions?
     
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  3. orcot Valued Senior Member

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    Aliens with godlike abilities could verry wel monitor us in our sleep or something. Accesing our memories as it where a computer.

    Here on earth, the CIA, MI5, the former KGB would proberly be likely targets for monitoring. It would also be lickely that they monitor weather satelites because even a alien race thats capable to terraform planets can learn something on how to undo the proces from our little orb.
     
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  5. glenn239 Registered Senior Member

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    Carl Sagan notwithstanding, we have insufficient information available to conclude whether such claims are, or are not, extraordinary with reference to a Galactic norm.
     
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  7. jumpercable 6EQUJ5 'WOW' Registered Senior Member

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    R2D2 & C3PO
     
    Last edited: Feb 12, 2007
  8. orcot Valued Senior Member

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    ...C-3PO

    Never the less I like the quistion on how you could observe the observer. It's unfortunate that kentucky fried chickens latests atempt has been negative so far in luring alien observers in. Altough they proberly succeeded in pissing the ISS crew off with their dried food.
     
  9. eburacum45 Valued Senior Member

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    Well; there are two main possibilities here; the Watcher hypothesis, with active robotic monitors on the Moon or somewhere watching our every move, and the Sentinel hypothesis, with inactive probes on the Moon or somewhere waiting for us to find them and activate them (first suggested as far as I know by Arthur Clarke in his story the Sentinel).

    Hmm; in both cases the best location for a base of operations is the Moon. If you have active probes in orbit around the Moon they would sometbe visible against the blackness of space; the Apollo spacecraft would be visible if observed by the Hubble telescope in empty space at the same distance as the Moon, albeit as dimensionless points; whereas they are completely invisible on the Moon's suface because of lack of contrast.

    So that's my bet; if the Watchers or Sentinels are anywhere they are probably on the Moon. We might find something along those lines if we go there agin; or perhaps a third option- the Relic; a long inactive watcher or sentinel which was abandoned here millions or even billions of years ago.
     
  10. jumpercable 6EQUJ5 'WOW' Registered Senior Member

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    Maybe just a boring very old alien-made inactive stone monolith that is buried beneath the lunar surface in some ancient moon crater.
     
    Last edited: Feb 13, 2007
  11. eburacum45 Valued Senior Member

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    The more I think about it, the more useful the Moon appears to be for any regime of covert surveillance. If we suppose a fleet of satellites designed to watch events on the Earth from a distance, they would be eninently observable by astronomers, particularly those watching for Near Earth objects or spy satellites made by other nations of our own planet. But if such monitoring devices were placed on the Moon, they could be camoflauged and made effectively undetectable.

    An interferometer telescope could be made, with its parts distributed all over the Moon; such an instrument could see remarkable details on our own planet, and would be relatively slow-moving in the sky allowing for a longer time to collect information and build up dtailed images. Of course the downside is that any particular part of the Earth wouild be invisible for more than twelve hours out of twenty-four; and images of the polar regions of Earth would be generally unsatifactory.

    If coupled with some well disguised monitoring systems here on Earth, the Moon could watch over us quite efficiently.
     
  12. Ophiolite Valued Senior Member

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    I agree that the moon is an obvious location as a prime monitoring station. Subterranean communication cables could also be run to the farside so that signals could be beamed from there to the alien's home planet without being intercepted on the Earth.
    Of course, if the monitoring equipment was emplaced a very long long time ago - billions of years, rather than hundreds of thousands, then it would not just be the Earth that might be monitored. Since technology we can envisage would wear out over time there would need to be a 'factory', perhaps located in the outer solar system to replenish the monitoring equipment. Because of its size and probable thermal signature, that should be easier to locate than small monitoring devices.
     
  13. Deepuz Registered Senior Member

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    Anything is a possibility if what we are talking about is possibilities.

    How about nano probes that we have absolutely no hope of detecting with our current technology. They could be in each and every one of us.

    Reminds me of that Trilogy 'Helliconia' where us Earthlings are in orbit spying on another civilization on another planet in another system for millenia.

    It becomes the best soap opera of all when beamed back home for the earthlings, as they go through turmoil, nuclear war, an enlightened age etc

    The people on the spying station itself evolve and change over time losing interest in earth and eventually killing each other off in the shear insanity of it all.
     
  14. eburacum45 Valued Senior Member

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    I like the idea, but I am hesitant to say it is possible without some more details. How do the nanites collect information? How do they transmit it? Why can't we detect the transmissions?

    To form a usable image the nanotech monitoring devices would need to build some sort of camera or eye; there is a limit on how small an eye can be and still produce useful images. I think that limit might be about the size of a jumping spider's eye; they can see quite well, considering their eyes are a fraction of a millimetre in diameter.

    I think that a radio transmission could be encrypted and disguised as static; but the actual emission itself could possibly be detected by modern equipment, especially if the information was being sent to an off-planet location like the Moon. Any contrary thoughts?
     
  15. orcot Valued Senior Member

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    Okay how abouth this one, some aliens detected earth and it's life a long time ago and destroyed it with a hyper galactic laser that automaticle transformed all the matter into computer data. Now they yust have to turn their computer on and fast track to their desired location and time.
    Possible?
     
  16. eburacum45 Valued Senior Member

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    Well this is the Simulation Argument, and is interesting, but unfalsifiable; see this link for more details
    http://www.simulation-argument.com/

    But the laser idea seems a bit difficult to defend in detail, and the creators of the simulation (which we may or may not find ourselves in) need not be aliens.

    Some other parties which might or might not want to simulate our world include:

    the humans of the far future might want to simulate thir own past, and may have decided to create our world as a simulation to replicate their own history. This is the main thrust of Bostrom's argument in the link above, but is not the only possibility.

    The simulation might be created by intelligent machines, to keep us happy without needing to maintain our world in a physical reality; we would probably be more efficient as computer programs than as hungry meat organisms. Note that the scenario depicted in the Matrix is complete boswellox; the AIs in that trilogy kept the humans as a source of energy, but instead the bodies of the human race would of course be an net energy consumer.

    The simulation might have been made by the inhabitants of the Earth in the distant past; intelligent dinosaurs or eurypterids might have created our virtual world as a simulation of what might evolve in the distant future.

    Or the simulation might be made by intelligent beings who exist in a universe more complex than our own by several orders of magnitude ; this is a possibility suggested by the fact that the world contains many processes which could not be accurately modelled in real time on any scale in our world.
     
    Last edited: Feb 19, 2007
  17. jumpercable 6EQUJ5 'WOW' Registered Senior Member

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    If there were many intelligent aliens civilizations out there that are living on other planets around remote or even nearby star systems in this galaxy and had evolved to a level of having radio technology, then it seems somewhat logical that the galaxy would have it's share of radio signals jamming around out there in deep space. Right now it's pretty quiet out there, isn't it?
     
    Last edited: Feb 22, 2007
  18. Ophiolite Valued Senior Member

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    There are several possibilities:
    a) The aliens are naturally introverted and don't like to talk. (They are, however, irripressible voyeurs.)
    b) They are using very tight beam optical lasers for interstellar communication.
    c) They have buried their communication signals, by encryption, in the radio noise.
    d) They have evolved some ftl technology, such as wormholes, that makes light speed communication pointless.
    e) etc.
     
  19. Zephyr Humans are ONE Registered Senior Member

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    Darn aliens. If they want us to believe in them, why not say so?

    I refuse to believe in aliens who sneak around instead of showing up decent and frontwise.
     
  20. orcot Valued Senior Member

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    Yes that's promising for the future imagen first contact with a bored rich alien kid that has a set of fake antennas on his head that gets arrested for spooking cows.
     
  21. jumpercable 6EQUJ5 'WOW' Registered Senior Member

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    Or 'None of the above'.
     
  22. mindtrick Registered Senior Member

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    There's a Raelian movement. I think they claim aliens are watching our every movement, like god.
     
  23. orcot Valued Senior Member

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    Thinks like that could also be a possible reason why they aren't comming.
     

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