Get plenty of these:
Posted on 04/25/2007 3:52:37 PM PDT by Momaw Nadon
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - When the aliens finally invade Earth, you may wish you had listened to Travis Taylor and Bob Boan.
And if the invasion follows the plot of a typical Hollywood blockbuster, they might also be the guys called in at the last minute to save the day.
After all, they have written "An Introduction to Planetary Defense," a primer on how humanity can defend itself if little green men wielding death rays show up at our cosmic doorstep.
And yes, they're serious.
"The probability really is there that aliens exist and are old enough to have technology to enable them to come here," Taylor said in an interview.
Taylor and Boan are hardly basement-dwelling paranoids obsessed with tinfoil hats and Area 51. Taylor holds advanced degrees in astronomy and physics, and is an associate at consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton. He and Boan have done consulting work for the Defense Department and the U.S. space agency NASA.
But their views have won few audiences outside of science fiction conventions, and their book is published by BrownWalker Press, which specializes in fringe topics and books with titles like "The Science and Lore of the Plant Cell Wall" and "ESP and Psychokinesis."
Taylor acknowledged alien invasion is hardly a mainstream concern but said it is naive to assume -- as scientists like the late Carl Sagan did -- that any beings advanced enough to master star travel will have evolved beyond war.
"It's a wonderful idea that has no basis in reality," Taylor said.
FERMI'S BLUNDER?
Taylor and Boan -- along with co-authors R.C. Anding and T. Conley Powell -- revisit two issues that frequently pop up in the debate about whether homo sapiens is alone in the universe: Drake's Equation and Fermi's Paradox.
The formula drawn up by U.S. astronomer Frank Drake in 1960 tries to estimate how likely contact with an alien civilization is given factors such as the number of habitable planets.
Taylor and Boan plugged in what they felt were conservative estimates, such as that aliens cannot travel faster than 10 percent of the speed of light.
After crunching the numbers, they say it is possible that our Milky Way galaxy harbors thousands of intelligent alien species and that there is a "high probability" that one or two of them visit Earth every century.
But if there are so many aliens out there, why haven't we heard from them already?
That is the question famously posed by the physicist Enrico Fermi in 1950 to dismiss speculation by his colleagues that intelligent life should be routine.
Taylor and Boan are convinced Fermi got it wrong. Even if aliens used Godlike technology to jump across thousands of light years in a single day, they would still need millions of years to explore all the star systems in the galaxy.
They simply may not have stumbled across our neck of the woods yet.
MUJAHIDEEN-STYLE RESISTANCE
Taylor and Boan started thinking about how to respond to an aggressive extraterrestrial attack during a 2001 discussion about defending against terrorist attacks.
"One thing that popped into my mind was that the only way Americans would be in an asymmetric war on the other side would be if we were attacked by aliens. Everyone chuckled, but then after a minute the comments started setting in," Taylor said.
"Then we really got to talking about it and we thought, well, you know, we really might need this contingency plan anyway," Taylor said.
Failure to prepare may mean mankind will have to dig in and fight with improvised weapons and hit-and-run tactics, much the same way Islamic extremists have battled the U.S. military in Iraq, Taylor said.
"You'd have to create an insurgency, a mujahideen-type resistance," Taylor said. "The insurgents know how to win this war against us. It also tells us that if we were attacked by aliens, this is our best defense."
BTW. In Texas we have mosquitos that would make any self-respecting ET wish that pirahnas had bitten him instead! Not to mention fireants, redwasps, copperheads, rattlesnakes, moccasins and the occasional "bubba".
I suggest reading “The Demon Haunted World, Ccience as a Candle in the Dark” By Carl Sagan instead.
“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” -Carl Sagan
again
I am a hard ass skeptic,
I would not waste time on such as I.
But you shouldn't say
there's "no evidence." It's there,
you just ignore it.
Then get the evidence as I desribed that I cannot ignore.
Get it to a lab. Get it to a TV station. Get it verified by labs around the world, get it on the cover of National Geographic and Scientific American.
Change the course of human history with it.
Ill be the first to celebrate the discovery.
Short of that, I am not interested.
Sorry. I am a hard ass unapologetic skeptic in the full sense of the word.
No hard feelings. Just who I am.
You have your answers for you. Thats great.
There actually is some pretty good eyewitness type of evidence around, from reliable people, including military, though there are no generally accepted “artifacts” that I know of. But as I noted on another thread, when I was on jury duty last month, the judge explained to us that eyewitness testimony alone was enough to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.
I don’t follow this stuff all the time, so I don’t have the more reliable reports at my fingertips, but I think they are not very hard to dig up either. I do enjoy these threads when they appear on FR. There are a fair number of freepers who’ve seen weird things, for that matter.
Interesting that you run a SETI program, I think there are other freepers who do that as well.
They’d need a hole the size of the Grand Canyon.
Fortunately for them, God knew they’d be coming and made advanced preparations.
R O T F L M B O !!
While I do not agree with all this Alien business, I do think it’s silly to need proof for everything. I’m the last one who wants to admit it, but weird shit happens a lot more than people think.
Of course when it does, you should turn your back on it. Keep yourself sane.
>>Homeland Security.[sic]<<
Maybe that should be “Homeland Security.[sic em]”
:)
You are right, LOL :)
I guess the only fitting response to that is . . .
ENJOY YOUR ADDICTION to TYPE II errors.
But . . . you might keep in mind, that they can bite every bit as hard as TYPE I errors.
LOL.
They might make interesting additions to their mothership zoo.
How about a little reality in this discussion.
If a species capable of extra celestial travel were to choose to invade earth I doubt that we would ever get the opportunity to use weapons of any kind in defense.
Such a species if they desired to take Earth for their own could most likely engineer a human specific virus to wipe out the human population.
If for some reason they decided that humans would make a good slave population (I can’t think of a reason that a so advanced civilization would need slaves) they could engineer a virus to lobotomize we humans making us passive.
It is most likely that the war would be over before we knew we were under attack. We would for all intents and purposes be at their mercy.
I think it’s pretty well accepted and/or proven in the field that Carl Sagan was a paid government stooge/debunker.
You make it sound like there are no TYPE II errors to be concerned about.
That’s IRRATIONAL.
TYPE II errors are every bit as common as TYPE I errors and just as deadly.
Stanton Friedman shredded the whole SETI enterprise with great humor. You can read it on his website.
BTW, there have been interesting artifacts etc. examined in multiple labs with otherworldly sorts of compositions verified. But it’s lost in the shuffle in that the MSM is typically ordered to avoid publishing the solid stuff or to publish bits of it sandwiched between lots of discounting stuff that leaves an impression of ridicule or weak evidence.
Assuming that’s the true story is virtually a guaranteed route to a horrendous TYPE II error.
There’s some serious suggestions from more than a few diverse sources that something very close to that has been designed to be the case. That implants that render humans passive, compliant slaves at a given future technological switch thrown or signal sent . . . are now likely planted in upwards of 3,000,0000 Americans alone.
Well dont let it bother you guys.
Keep persuing your truths.
It will be more then obvious to all someday if your correct.
Right?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.