[OT, don't move] Go see Signs.

[ColonelHardisson]

Re: Bwahahahaha!

Regarding the film and aliens, "Signs" is probably a wonderful movie, but there are no aliens. Decades of research by the likes of SETI, et cetera, have yet to come close to undoing the damage done by Enrico Fermi in the summer of 1950.

I think what you mean is that there are no aliens visiting Earth or making crop circles. There is no way to tell if there are any aliens at all in the universe. Given the sheer size of just our galaxy alone, and the increasing number of extrasolar planets that have been discovered, odds are getting good that there is at least some alien life out there, whether it's at the microscopic level or higher.

SETI is a great program, but they only receive, for the most part (it's pretty impractical to transmit, given the distances and time inviolved, and the fact that every day uncounted radio transmissions are broadcast from Earth anyway). Given that it's only been around for 40 years, and even the Milky Way is tens of thousands of light years across, it could take a while before any signal, if a civilization exists to make one, is detected. Consider - Earth has been putting out fairly powerful signals for only about 60-70 years now. That means that there is a bubble 60-70 light years in radius surrounding Earth where our radio and TV signals can be detected, which is really just a tiny drop in the galactic bucket. Nobody beyond that bubble has heard us yet. It could well be that a civilization is out there, but their "bubble" hasn't spread wide enough for us to detect it yet either.

Nevertheless, while I believe alien life is possible, even intelligent life, I just don't think any are visiting Earth. Crop circles certainly aren't made by aliens; even if aliens do visit Earth, why would they make crop circles? To be able to travel interstellarly, they would have to know about radio signals - a level of technology tht advanced simply could not be unaware of them; they would also likely be able to at least figure out that we use them for communication; therefore, why make designs in plant life for communication with us? Besides, how many hoaxers have to be found out before people get the idea that crop circles really are just a bunch of hoaxes? So they appear around the world - so does TV. And where did most of us hear of crop circles? TV. So some have evidences that crop circles have been around since before TV. Is it really hard to imagine that people could think of cutting or mashing down designs in crops back then? The fact that labyrinths (designs on the floor, not dungeons) were common in churches, and many nobles liked to have mazes made in their gardens, make it seem at least possible that people were familiar with such concepts. Besides that, humans seem to love to make big things, whether these are designs or statues or buildings or what-have-you. They like making things that are big and can be seen far away. So there was no way to see some of these designs from the air back then - well, maybe they just wanted them seen by God or whatever deity or power they wanted to catch the notice of. People have done much sillier things in such pursuits.

 

[Mark Chance]

What I mean....

I think what you mean is that there are no aliens visiting Earth or making crop circles. There is no way to tell if there are any aliens at all in the universe.

No, I mean there is no intelligent life anywhere in this galaxy except here. Other galaxies are so far away that considering them in the question is nonsensical.

Given the vast number of stars in this galaxy and the age of this galaxy, if there was but a single intelligent species other than us with the capability for interstellar travel, we'd have already been visited time and time again. Aliens would be living next door to us.

Exhausted planet resources and dying stars would provide good motives for exploration and homesteading. Some cultures, like our own, would find other motives for colonizing, and it would only take one enterprising population to begin exponential expansion. Fermi showed that, even assuming modest speeds, every habitable star system in the galaxy should have been colonized within mere millions, not billions, of years. Complete colonization could take place in the relative twinkling of a cosmic eye, many times over, in a ten-billion-year-old galaxy like the Milky Way. "So," asked Fermi, "where are they?"

The answer: No where because they don't exist. There is no scientific data that leads to any other conclusion, although there is a whole lot of science fiction masquerading as science fact.

 

[Zerovoid]

Re: What I mean....

No, I mean there is no intelligent life anywhere in this galaxy except here. Other galaxies are so far away that considering them in the question is nonsensical.

Given the vast number of stars in this galaxy and the age of this galaxy, if there was but a single intelligent species other than us with the capability for interstellar travel, we'd have already been visited time and time again. Aliens would be living next door to us.

Umm, you know how big the galaxy is, right? Its more or less 100,000 light years across. Without faster than light travel(which does not exist according to current science), no more than a tiny fraction of species in our galaxy could possibly have recieved our radio signals and visited us.

Exhausted planet resources and dying stars would provide good motives for exploration and homesteading. Some cultures, like our own, would find other motives for colonizing, and it would only take one enterprising population to begin exponential expansion. Fermi showed that, even assuming modest speeds, every habitable star system in the galaxy should have been colonized within mere millions, not billions, of years. Complete colonization could take place in the relative twinkling of a cosmic eye, many times over, in a ten-billion-year-old galaxy like the Milky Way. "So," asked Fermi, "where are they?"

The answer: No where because they don't exist. There is no scientific data that leads to any other conclusion, although there is a whole lot of science fiction masquerading as science fact.

This makes a little more sense. The universe has been around for a long time, and an alien species that evolved at basically the same time as us in the cosmological sense could have already had millions of years to colonize the galaxy. So, most habitable planets would probably have been settled by now. Oh well, maybe the aliens have lots of great technology like us, but they just choose to sit on their collective ass like humanity does, and have no ambition to expand.

I used to think it was inevitable that we would begin interstellar colonization, but given the way NASA is dragging its feet on the Mars mission, and how people don't care, we'll probably just nuke our planet and die in obscurity. Maybe most races do this. Damn, that sucks.

 

[LightPhoenix]

Signs is not about aliens or crop circles. If you think it is, I strongly urge you to go see the movie again. And that's about all I'll say on that note.

To Ashtal and Tetsubo, go see the movie. See the point above, because I think once you see it you'll be able to appreciate it for what it is. But I can't force you.

To Mark Chance... the basic fact in the discussion about alien life is that there is no proof, one way or the other. It's beyond our scope. You, like many of the scientists you criticize, base your arguments on personal preconceptions and ideologies. At this stage in the game, we can not prove one way or the other there is no intelligent life.

 

[Mark Chance]

Could be, but...

This makes a little more sense. The universe has been around for a long time, and an alien species that evolved at basically the same time as us in the cosmological sense could have already had millions of years to colonize the galaxy. So, most habitable planets would probably have been settled by now. Oh well, maybe the aliens have lots of great technology like us, but they just choose to sit on their collective ass like humanity does, and have no ambition to expand.

The only problem with an "the-aliens-can-travel-but-don't-want-to" scenario is that it must apply equally to all theoretical alien civilizations, not just some of them. If even one alien civilization had the desire for interstellar travel, Fermi's paradox still presents a problem that no amount of ETI research has overcome.

As SETI Institute astronomer Seth Shostak observed in his book Sharing the Universe: "It isn?t that we can resolve the Fermi paradox by arguing that most alien societies self-destruct or lose interest in expansion. Every single one of them must do so, for otherwise representatives of at least one society would be in our neighborhood."

To Mark Chance... the basic fact in the discussion about alien life is that there is no proof, one way or the other. It's beyond our scope. You, like many of the scientists you criticize, base your arguments on personal preconceptions and ideologies. At this stage in the game, we can not prove one way or the other there is no intelligent life.

Actually, the basic fact is there is an overwhelming abundance of evidence that there is no intelligent alien life and no evidence that there is. Since we're talking science, this could conceivably change, but decades of research aren't any closer to finding life now than then, nor have any of the hard scientific facts arguing against such life existing in this galaxy been overcome.

If the proposition "There is intelligent life elsewhere in the galaxy" is treated as a scientific hypothesis, it fails on every count. The corrolary, OTOH, succeeds with flying colors. Obfuscatory nonsense involving you being able to divine my "true" motives (my personal preconceptions and ideologies of which you know nothing) cannot alter the absolutely miserable record of ETI research.

 

[Umbran]

Odd question - does knowing that elves, dwarves, and Gandalf's eyebrows all come out of a makeup trailer ruin Lord of the Rings?

We know elves don't exist, but we can have fun watching a fantasy about them. How does "knowing" that aliens don't exist ruin a fantasy about them?

 

[Mark Chance]

For me....

Odd question - does knowing that elves, dwarves, and Gandalf's eyebrows all come out of a makeup trailer ruin Lord of the Rings?

We know elves don't exist, but we can have fun watching a fantasy about them. How does "knowing" that aliens don't exist ruin a fantasy about them?

For me, it doesn't. I enjoy most science fiction movies, although I'm not particularly fond of most science fiction novels. Go figure. Of course the absolutely ghastly ST: NG movies and two most recent and hellishly bad Star Wars movies have somewhat shaken my faith in the genre for film.

I have plans to see "Signs." I enjoy M. Night S's work, even though his sense of pacing tends to plod too much. After a while, suspense turns to boredom. He could've shaved at least 20 minutes off of both "Sixth Sense" and "Unbreakable" without adversely affecting the stories.

 

[Umbran]

Re: For me....

I have plans to see "Signs." I enjoy M. Night S's work, even though his sense of pacing tends to plod too much. After a while, suspense turns to boredom. He could've shaved at least 20 minutes off of both "Sixth Sense" and "Unbreakable" without adversely affecting the stories.

To each their own, I guess. I find the pacing of his work refreshing amid all the movies that rush, and are presented as if the audience has the attention span of a fruit fly and doesn't want any time to think. While the plots of the movies might remain intact, as dramatic presentations, they would be ruined by such cutting.

 

[Mark Chance]

Re: Re: For me....

To each their own, I guess. I find the pacing of his work refreshing amid all the movies that rush, and are presented as if the audience has the attention span of a fruit fly and doesn't want any time to think. While the plots of the movies might remain intact, as dramatic presentations, they would be ruined by such cutting.

How nice. Now I have the attention span of a fruit fly.

There is too much padding in his movies. Slow pans to just set up a scene, walking scenes with no dialogue or plot relevance, et cetera. My POV is that he put these things in to help the slower members of the audience catch up to the tightly-woven structure of the plot, but for me such "down time" tends to become dull. It's not that there needs to be action for action's sake, but there needs to be something going on. I also dislike the fill-in-the-story flashback sequences, such as in "Sixth Sense" when Ghost Bruce finally realizes what's going on and then we, the audience, get treated to a heavy-handed montage of earlier scenes. I recall the same basic technique in "Unbreakable" (which I actually thought the better of the two films).

I'm a relatively bright guy. I seldom need things I've been watching closely explained to me. This is why, while I may watch a presidential debate, I never watch the post-debate commentary.

 

[sfgiants]

Questions, and minor spoilers

The one question I have for a few of the posters here is: if you have no intention of seeing the movie, because you have already made up your minds about it, why post here at all?

I personally have seen it, and will concur that the story is nothing about aliens and crop circles.

SPOILERS (small, and not very graphic ones)
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The story is more about faith, and about how people live their lives. Are you a believer in miracles, or luck? Everything in the movie boils down to this.