Aliens

[Peter Waller]

I took a photograph a number of years ago which sold very well for me in a number of UFO mags. I never said what it was but mag editors guessed and readers agreed! Earn't me quite a few bob too. It was actually a time exposure of a helicopter with its landing light on! Did look wheird though. Very often people see what they want to see.

[Ken L]

Nightwing.

That's a very strange photo. The colour of the "face" doesn't seem to match anything else in the image and if you hadn't said it isn't, I'd have said it was a digi job.

Being as it was taken in Michigan, I have no explaination - if it was Wales, it'd obviously be another bloody hippy.

[Nightwing]

Ken L:

Nightwing.

That's a very strange photo. The colour of the "face" doesn't seem to match anything else in the image and if you hadn't said it isn't, I'd have said it was a digi job.

Being as it was taken in Michigan, I have no explaination - if it was Wales, it'd obviously be another bloody hippy.

Yeah, most I have shown it too accused me of making it in photoshop. All I can say is, that's not the case. I have the original hard copy, and negative...not that either really matter much in this day and age!

[Guest sslatter]

Reminds me of the polaroid photo of the Kennedy assassination (the exploding head one).

 

Saw a TV prog where they enlarged it, and got an image of a "policeman" firing a gun on the grassy knoll.

 

Personally, not convinced by either.

[Ken L]

Graham. I don't thnk that I said I was a believer either. The human mind has an incredible ability to spot or produce patterns and images from very skant information. It would have been very useful to be able to recognise a skulking Cave Lion from a few tufts of visible hair when we were living in caves and these same abilities have lead to our arts and the romantic notion of patterns in the stars or clouds.

 

Nightwing's photo is interesting either because it shows something strange or because you see something strange - even though it isn't there.

 

60 years ago, someone seeing Nightwing's image would have "seen" an Elf, a Nymph, a Goblin, or a Dryad. Now we "see" aliens.

The other thing that's intersting is just how similar modern images of differing types of "aliens" are very similar to traditional depictions of supernatural beings like pixies, elves and the like.

Is it the same repeating trick of human perception or the same real phenominon being seen over the centuries but having a diferent explaination fitted to it according to the age ?

[Guest sslatter]

"60 years ago, someone seeing Nightwing's image would have "seen" an Elf, a Nymph, a Goblin, or a Dryad. Now we "see" aliens.

The other thing that's intersting is just how similar modern images of differing types of "aliens" are very similar to traditional depictions of supernatural beings like pixies, elves and the like.

Is it the same repeating trick of human perception or the same real phenominon being seen over the centuries but having a diferent explaination fitted to it according to the age ?"

 

I completely agree with you that these 'sightings' always embody the zeitgeist: 400 years ago, witches on broomsticks, the Devil etc; 100 years ago, ghosts and phantoms; today, flying saucers and aliens.

 

Human imagination is a powerful tool.

[Leon Roskilly]

Years ago, when we had our boat at Mersea Island, after a days fishing from Dad's boat,I'd set off to drive my girlfriend back to civilisation.

 

The engine of the mini-van had other ideas and died, so I parked up, got the girl-friend to a bus station then started to hitch back the many miles to the boat where Dad & his mate were staying for the weekend (it was Dad's car!).

 

By this time it was pretty late and as I left civilisation behind, heading out of town into the country, the street lights suddenly turned off and I was suddenly pitched into complete and utter darkness, miles from anywhere.

 

It was pretty creepy walking that country road, hardly able to see the road ahead, hearing things move on the other side of the hedge, but as I got nearer to Mersea, I could hear the gentle background hum of the nuclear power station at Bradwell.

 

Maybe I'd been walking for an hour.

 

And I could hear the humming behind me getting louder.

 

Looking back toward where the sound was coming from, there was a brightness in the mist that was getting brighter as the hum increased. But it all looked very unreal and ethereal, the loudness and brightness increasing for several minutes.

 

I was reminded of a 1950's 'B' science fiction movie and, with no obvious explanation of the increasing hum or the growing brightness, I really expected to see a trans-dimensional visitor of horrible insect-like visage start to form in the growing pool of misty light.

 

Instead a car came round the bend!

 

It was the sound of it's wheels on the long hill down to the sharp bend where it's headlights had lightened the mist that I'd heard!

 

(I guess that if it had turned off, the sound and brightness switching off, I'd have always wondered about that!)

 

As things turned out, I had my lift to Mersea, where I spent the rest of the night beneath an upturned boat on the beach, was questioned by the police, and got a lift to Dad's anchored boat from an early morning crab-potter just after dawn.

 

Dad was quite surprised to see me!

 

The car started first time when we got to it!

 

Tight Lines - leon

[Leon Roskilly]

Imagine a technology advanced civilisation that has been going for thousands, maybe tens of thousands (perhaps hundreds of thousands) of years.

 

At some stage their ability to run virtual simulations (a basic scientific investigative tool) would be mind bogglingly complex.

 

They would be able to create a virtual cosmos, where virtual life evolved from virtual matter, energy, time and gravity and be able to tweak these virtual models to see what happens with infintely small differences in the models.

 

They would be able to run billions of these simulations simultaneously, over thousands of years (though at high speed so that a microsecond would encompass hundreds of thousands of virtual years).

 

And in some of thes simulations, virtual intelligent life would evolve, and not knowing that they were in a virtual universe, start to run their own virtual simulations.

 

And they too would run their own, not knowing that they were only virtual beings in a virtual universe, created by virtual beings in another virtual universe, created by ..........

 

Now, there would be infinitely many more virtual cosmos than real cosmos, and as any being would be unable to determine whether they were in a real or virtual cosmos, the odds are that any being with intelligence is far more likely to be a virtual being within a virtual cosmos, than a rare real being in a real cosmos.

 

So, where are we?

 

What are the odds of Earth being the only planet in the universe with intelligent life.

 

What are the odds of Earth being just a virtual planet in a virtual universe?

 

TL - leon

 

ps Not my idea!

 

[ 18. December 2004, 10:16 PM: Message edited by: Leon Roskilly ]

[kendo]

pardon?

[John S]

Kendo, you are so polite. But you're supposed to ask for pardon after you've burped....