UFO Proliferation

**Ruprect** · 30 June 2008, 21:08

Harriet Harmen is preparing an amendment to the Equal Opportunities Bill ensuring that all aliens are entitled to equal pay, jobs and healthcare. It's only fair.

**pisces** · 30 June 2008, 21:13

Originally posted by Ruprect View Post

Harriet Harmen is preparing an amendment to the Equal Opportunities Bill ensuring that all aliens are entitled to equal pay, jobs and healthcare. It's only fair.

We all know the female aliens are at home light years away looking after the nippers.

**HairyArsedBloke** · 30 June 2008, 21:52

What makes you thing that they are coming here? Maybe they are here to take their people home? It could be that even the aliens are fed up with life under a Labour government and are fleeing as fast as they can.

**SueEllen** · 30 June 2008, 22:25

Where's that Giant Alien Lizard gone?

**shoes** · 30 June 2008, 22:32

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=kv0-vSK4bmg

You ain't seen me, right?

**Board Game Geek** · 30 June 2008, 22:56

Either they are coming out, during a turbulent time to try and avert an Armageddon type disaster (CERN ?) , they may be planning on launching an Armageddon type disaster, or they may be planning Official Contact.

Or it's all a load of doo-doo.

We live in interesting times, eh ?

As an aside, I do believe in other life in the known universe. It's statistically impossible for there not to be life.
However, as an astronomer, I am well aware of the vast distances between constellations and other solar systems, and I cannot forsee any alien technology having the capability to travel the colossal distances required in space.

Put it another way, Abell 1835 IR1916, is a galaxy that has a redshift of 10 and is located about 13,230 million light-years away. It is therefore seen at a time when the Universe was merely 470 million years young, that is, barely 3 percent of its current age.

Let's suppose a civilisation within this galaxy could travel space at the speed of light. That is still 13,230 million years transit time, just to get here. Completely unrealistic.

You'd need to travel at many multiples of the speed of light to get anywhere in a meaningful amount of time. I mean, literally millions of times the speed of light.

Considering the fact that nothing with mass can travel at the speed of light, let alone beyond it, there is little hope for anything travelling at millions the speed of light.

I worked out using current technology that to travel to our closest star system (Alpha Centauri , 4.34 ly away) it would still take about 32,000 years.

As much as I like sci-fi, you've got to be pragmatic and realise that the laws of physics, much like the computer on Little Britain, say "No".

**OwlHoot** · 1 July 2008, 00:00

Originally posted by Board Game Geek View Post

Let's suppose a civilisation within this galaxy could travel space at the speed of light. That is still 13,230 million years transit time, just to get here. Completely unrealistic.

You'd need to travel at many multiples of the speed of light to get anywhere in a meaningful amount of time. I mean, literally millions of times the speed of light.

Our galaxy is "only" 100,000 light years across. Also, believe it or not, travelling very close to the speed of light you can cover vast inter-galactic distances in a modest time, a year or less as the traveller perceives it.

For example, accelerating at a steady 1g for a month gets you to about 0.99c and you could reach to the nearest star 4 light years away in about three months. But there's a catch - to a stay at home observer you'd take at least four years to get there and, getting back after say a year as you saw it, you'd find eight years had passed back on Earth.

In theory, if you accelerated for longer, say a year or two, you could get to the Andromeda galaxy 30 million light years away. But again if you returned to Earth, in a round trip that took you a mere two or three years, 60 million years would have elapsed back here ..

As for the aliens, if they aren't the Army testing observation balloons, maybe they're tourists from the future, and all the flashing lights are them taking snaps with their holographic cameras, and the large craft seen rising from the ground was a recovery truck sent to tow one of their time tour buses after it broke down.

**KentPhilip** · 1 July 2008, 00:13

UFO's in Basingstoke? Does that stand for unutterably fat objects? The chavvy obese women from that crummy town who found they could float into the sky if they started to drink the new type of Lidl coke made from helium...

**NickFitz** · 1 July 2008, 01:06

Originally posted by Solent View Post

So what's all these recent sightings of UFO's over the UK. Latest in Basingstoke on Saturday, and... according to the RAF they could not comment for security reasons, bit suspicoius

. So are we going to get invaded and the b*ggers take all our jobs and pass through immigration with no problems

It's called the Silly Season. With all the politicians and such knocking off for the summer, the journalists have no news to print. So instead they print any old nonsense, often distorting and exaggerating trivia (such as local bulletins of what the Police have been up to) so as to create something worthy of filling the gaps between the advertisements that pay their wages.

This is a time of rich pickings for journalists on local newspapers - if they notice something about "reports of a light in the sky which was later identified as [a helicopter | the planet Venus | your mum]" in the daily bulletin from the local constabulary, they can ignore the "identified as" bit, phone one of their local copper contacts, get a few unattributable quotes ("It was unlike anything I've ever seen"... "It suddenly vanished"... and so on) and sell it to the nationals, who are desperate to fill space.

And that, boys and girls, is how the Daily Mail is made

UFO Proliferation