14 hours ago, goates said:

Wouldn't be the first time something like Google Maps lead someone down a backroad to the middle of nowhere.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66873982

18 hours ago, goates said:

Sounds like a couple that were lost, and the wife finally got the husband to pull over and ask for directions. 👽

Actually, the aliens were asking for directions to the Devil's Tower in Wyoming. They said they were supposed to meet some people there.

12 hours ago, martin-w said:

 

Time traveling visitors form the future is an interesting possibility. Especially when we consider that people report seeing humanoid figures. We would perhaps expect an alien species to be entirely different to us, unless some extreme form of convergent evolution is a factor.

Interesting that the same design craft are seen dating back to the Romans who said they saw flying shields in the sky (Flying saucers). Well I guess if our alien friends are traveling at relativistic velocities and are impacted by time dilation it could well be that the very craft that the Romans saw are the very craft we see today, including the same occupants if manned. Due to time dilation, days, weeks, might pass by for them, dependent on velocity,  but 100's or even 1000's of years for we Earthbound humans. If that's the case, I guess they would need to be some kind of nomadic species, because an inordinate amount of time would have passed on their home planet if they returned home and the civilization they knew changed dramatically or even non existent.  

Well given our current main stream ideas about nature that would make sense. But I'd contest that the days of those main stream theories are numbered due to extent of the observational and experimental anomalies they all face. I'm always drawn back to Thomas Kuhn and his contention that there is a critical mass of anomalies any theory, no mater how successful it is, can sustain before it collapses. Preceding the collapse there is a crisis. And there is a crisis! I'm inclined to think that reality is a contiguity of superabundant contemporary narratives. A mouthful that certainly would require elaboration to elucidate. But the up shot is simply that the observed universe is it. Emphasis on observed. So just as we (i.e. credible witness testimony) understand ghosts as encounters with dead people of the past in their Georgian and Victorian clothing, our future hacked enhanced and technologically advanced others encounter us dead to them in our 21st century clothing. Not because of time travel but reality is a contiguity of superabundant contemporary narratives. In other words everything is now and now is all there is.🤪

Edited September 22, 20232 yr by FBW737

5 hours ago, FBW737 said:

the days of those main stream theories are numbered due to extent of the observational and experimental anomalies they all face.

 

All? Well no. We were talking about time dilation, and time dilation was predicted by Einstein and experimentally proven way back in 1959. Its been experimentally proven many times since. In fact every time we test Einsteins theories they are correct.

There are anomalies with some theories and much we are still to learn, but its wrong to say "all" theories are wrong and that their days are numbered.

 

Krauss and Sabine discuss whether time travel is possible.

16:29

 

 

18 hours ago, martin-w said:

 

All? Well no. We were talking about time dilation, and time dilation was predicted by Einstein and experimentally proven way back in 1959. Its been experimentally proven many times since. In fact every time we test Einsteins theories they are correct.

There are anomalies with some theories and much we are still to learn, but its wrong to say "all" theories are wrong and that their days are numbered.

 

Yes, but it's not a grand unified theory! There are observations that it doesn't predict and a whole realm of observations that it has nothing to say about at all. My knowledge of the subject is anecdotal at best and I have no credentials in physics other than I took physics in high school and Mechanical engineering in college. However I've forgotten more about epistemology than most people know!🤣 I agree with you that we can observe a phenomenon called time dilation and it agrees with General Relativity. That's the most fun part of relativity but I'd be surprised if General Relativity is not superseded by a better theory with a radically different paradigm. The new theory will be able to predict all of the experimental and observational outcomes that General relativity predicts and will also be able to predict the outcome of experiments that General relativity gets wrong. It other words it will be falsifiable. I always refer to the Michelson–Morley experiment to measure the speed of light through the luminiferous aether. When I came across this in my studies some 30+ years ago it blow my world view out of the water. At that time circa 1880 the physics community was wrapping up the lose ends of Newtonian Physics which had been on the go for a good 300+ years. Nobody was expecting the results of the experiment and it falsified Newtons world view big time. Basically, in Newton, space and time are absolutes and separate entities. Objects had extension in space and duration in time. We have come a long way since then but just as General Relativity which, paradigmaticly see's space-time as a continuum, has an excellent track record on predicting experimental and observational outcomes so to did Newtonian Physics and for a far longer period of time than General Relativity so far. And if I'm not wrong there is more today to bring down Einstein than there was at the time to bring down Newton. The phrase "To big to fail" comes to mind!🤪.

I other words, I see no reason why I should expect the watch on your wrist, a persistent object of your experience and the watch on my wrist, a persistent object of my experience, even if we got together in the same room and synchronized them to the leap of the second hand, would after we both went our separate ways and perhaps on long journeys of light years, be still synchronized or even close (assuming the light years journey) on our subsequent meeting not withstanding there is no such thing as a perfect wrist chronograph. And I don't need Einstein explain it. I just need to reject the idea that phenomenological reality is an empirical facsimile of some hypothetical noumenon. I's say it isn't!

The appropriate way of looking at science is that it is superficial not foundational. That's never going to change. Not disparaging science here, it's just that it is not a religion. I suppose that's why we are allowed to talk about it!🤣🤔🤪

Anyway, I stand by my earlier contention. If the aliens are real and that's a big if! They are humans who's narrative occurs in a different period of history. Just like ghosts!😨

The speed of light is not independent of its source. It's just that all the light is going in the same direction!🤣

Edited September 23, 20232 yr by FBW737

5 hours ago, FBW737 said:

Yes, but it's not a grand unified theory!

 

There is currently no evidence that nature is described by a Grand Unified Theory. I think you may be getting mixed up with a Unified Field Theory.

But in either case, it doesn't change the fact that time dilation is experimentally proven and fact. 

On 9/21/2023 at 6:30 PM, FBW737 said:

Well given our current main stream ideas about nature that would make sense. But I'd contest that the days of those main stream theories are numbered due to extent of the observational and experimental anomalies they all face. I'm always drawn back to Thomas Kuhn and his contention that there is a critical mass of anomalies any theory, no mater how successful it is, can sustain before it collapses. Preceding the collapse there is a crisis. And there is a crisis! I'm inclined to think that reality is a contiguity of superabundant contemporary narratives. A mouthful that certainly would require elaboration to elucidate. But the up shot is simply that the observed universe is it. Emphasis on observed. So just as we (i.e. credible witness testimony) understand ghosts as encounters with dead people of the past in their Georgian and Victorian clothing, our future hacked enhanced and technologically advanced others encounter us dead to them in our 21st century clothing. Not because of time travel but reality is a contiguity of superabundant contemporary narratives. In other words everything is now and now is all there is.🤪

A fundamental component of Buddhism has made this painfully obvious for quite some time. Backing up many years to my BA thesis on Eastern religions, I remember reading how the present conditions both the past and the future to be experienced here and now. The explanation of this was a total mind screw because it wasn’t improbable, but possible.

1 hour ago, newtie said:

A fundamental component of Buddhism has made this painfully obvious for quite some time. Backing up many years to my BA thesis on Eastern religions, I remember reading how the present conditions both the past and the future to be experienced here and now. The explanation of this was a total mind screw because it wasn’t improbable, but possible.

Going back a few decades to my BA thesis of the Critique of Pure Reason I have to agree with you!🤣