Ancient Aliens

Discussion in 'Science and Technology' started by BillJ, Jun 19, 2012.

  1. Noname Given

    Noname Given Admiral Admiral

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    ^^^
    Refereed by the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster:lol:
     
  2. Herkimer Jitty

    Herkimer Jitty Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Maybe if they actually cared about and understood the engineering at those sites, sure. But they don't. It's 1 minute of "this baffles me and I don't understand how it was built, therefore noone could have built this" leading into 10 more minutes of "therefore aliens."

    These people aren't archaeologists. They aren't anthropologists. Tsoukalos, for instance, has a degree in sports information and communications. Actual anthropological practices are ancillary when it comes to the ancient astronaut... idea.

    Yes, idea. Its not even a hypothesis, much less a scientific theory.
     
  3. DarthTom

    DarthTom Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Fair enough. Do you find any archaeological site to be baffling how ancient people built without some kind of 'help' and.or quantum leap in technlocical ability based on understood technologies at the time?

    Again, on a few occasions I think the series asks some interesting questions. But agreed the lionshare of the series is about nonesense.
     
  4. cooleddie74

    cooleddie74 Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Suffice it to say, any TV series that spends most of a one-hour program contemplating whether or not Albert Einstein was an extraterrestrial genetic experiment designed to increase human intelligence has its issues with being a scientifically sound show.
     
  5. FordSVT

    FordSVT Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Because the assertion itself is bullshit. You're falling into their con by not questioning the questions themselves.

    Read.

    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/lostempires/obelisk/cutting.html

    Read.

    http://www.dumbassguide.info/blog.php?bid=87
     
  6. sojourner

    sojourner Admiral In Memoriam

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    Just around the bend.
    Those links might make The Castellan's head implode.
     
  7. Silvercrest

    Silvercrest Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Haw! That second link is priceless!

    The next time Ancient Aliens brings up a "smoking gun", they should recognize they shot themselves in the foot with it.
     
  8. Lonemagpie

    Lonemagpie Writer Admiral

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    It reached *that* stage in the pilot episode...
     
  9. Gary7

    Gary7 Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I am amused by how an outrageous claim will be made, later disproven, then dismissed to go onto the next outrageous claim.

    The whole notion of moving enormous rocks that required alien intervention was debunked when scientists discovered enough evidence to understand how Stonehenge components were hauled around. Some enterprising guy came up with a very clever pulley and lever system to move rocks of the same size, weight, and proportion without any motorized assistance. Despite people living in a time considered primitive by our standards, there were some intensely impressive achievements of mathematical understanding made that enabled certain groups to accomplish feats that would leave most human beings today baffled in amazement.

    But "Ancient Aliens" is such a fun and compelling alternative!
    :lol:

    Frankly, unless there is truly some kind of "space folding" technique possible with the right amount of power and device orchestration, travel between worlds is sadly linear and VERY long term. Which means that considering any sentient aliens being able to visit us is just outright impossible. We're on the periphery of the Milky Way galaxy. There's far more activity going on near the core to keep sentient beings busy than to wander off into the vast void of multi-generational space time on a mostly doomed quest to see if there's anybody living out on the periphery. Also, considering the time and distance problem, the fact that our lives have been so brief on this planet, we're too far away for anybody to even realize that sentient life has formed here.
     
  10. RAMA

    RAMA Admiral Admiral

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    Part of the Fermi paradox suggests that there has been plenty of time without the need of light travel or breaking the laws of physics for aliens to have appeared to us. But yes, I think it's possible galactic center is just way more interesting..
     
  11. DarthTom

    DarthTom Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    You make Star Trek fan boys cry when you say that interstellar travel is technologically unfeasible. ;)
     
  12. The Green Mushroom

    The Green Mushroom Commander Red Shirt

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    I have been watching it and while most of it has been in the "It's So Bad, It's Good" territory, the scientific hooey they are spewing is seriously making the show tread to a level of "It is So Bad, It's Gone from Good Back to Bad" that I never knew existed.

    Among the gems from the last batch of episodes:

    • Aliens invented the afterlife and all ancient tombs EVERYWHERE in the world were attempts to FedEx the dead back to the alien homeworld.
    • The Great Pyramid is a giant microwave oven powered by water sloshing around in the basement that beams electricity to France and Mexico
    • Albert Einstein and some other famous thinking guys were mouthpieces for ideas that aliens beamed into their heads.
    • Mercury had no use whatsoever to ancient civilizations and the river of mercury that the Chinese said was in the tomb of the First Emperor isn't really a river of mercury, it is the circuit board for a really big computer
    • The Egyptians were afraid of the Apis Bulls and buried them in alien built tombs to either: save themselves from Zombie Apis Bulls or send the bulls back to the aliens
     
  13. Silvercrest

    Silvercrest Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I'm good with that last one. The more they acknowledge that they're talking "bull", the better.
     
  14. cooleddie74

    cooleddie74 Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    It wasn't Aliens. It never was.

    It was....

    [​IMG]

    PONIES.
     
  15. The Green Mushroom

    The Green Mushroom Commander Red Shirt

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    I think that was the last episode.


    I'm not kidding...Hair Man decided that a picture of a running horse in some ancient temple was really the picture of an alien rocket ship that people assumed was a flying horse.
     
  16. Kemaiku

    Kemaiku Admiral Admiral

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    Oh good, now they think Pegasi made the pyramids instead, that's...slightly better?
     
  17. RAMA

    RAMA Admiral Admiral

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    Actually it's totally feasible, just not the way we see in Star Trek, that might be possible in SOME way, but it's also probably the least likely way. What's more likely is the aforementioned Von Neuman machines; machines that bring copies of us to their destination at a fraction of light speed; or copies of us that are beamed within lasers as information that are created from the blueprint of DNA or are recreated from a foglet-like cloud.
     
  18. Crazy Eddie

    Crazy Eddie Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Von Neuman machines are even less likely considering they would still have to remain fully functional over a truly geologic timescale in order to be in any way functional. If you had technology that robust, it wouldn't need to be self-replicating because it would basically last forever. It's a Crazy Eddie concept that otherwise serves no practical purpose.

    It's mundanely obvious that interstellar travel is perfectly feasible for an unmanned probe that can expect to be discovered intact after a billion years or so by an alien race that didn't exist when it was launched. Travel or transport LIVING BEINGS just isn't going to happen, though, without a space fold or something similar. Or -- as Gary mentioned -- if a civilization evolved near the galactic core or in a dense cluster of stars, in which case interstellar travel only takes slightly longer than interplanetary travel.
     
  19. DarthTom

    DarthTom Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    What about creating an artificial wormhole like they depicted in the film Lost in Space?
     
  20. Robert Maxwell

    Robert Maxwell memelord Premium Member

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    Given that we've never actually observed a natural wormhole, it's still speculation at this point to think they even exist, or are possible.