Real Millennium Falcon?

[Rina Ascura]

Don't forget about the fiasco with the "Martian sphinx", aka "Face of Cydonia". A structure resembling a human face was found on Mars, and everyone was excited. Later, more hi-res photos showed that it was just a bizarre rock that resembles a face from a distance and under specific lighting.

[Nhylus]

Well, it could end up being another Roswell event. Where they actually find something and then cover it up. Currently, they're just saying it is possibly a glacial rock deposit.
Seems like anything to do with aliens is extremely censored, or labeled conspiracy. Or that only crazy people believe it.

Ironically, I feel most of the world's population would acknowledge the possibility that extraterrestrial life exists, many would be quick to disregard any evidence. Even if it was a 13-mile wide ship hovering above their community.

[SafetyTurtle]

Personally I think it's just an ancient civilization doing a "hey, lets leave this here to screw with peoples heads a thousand years in the future!"...sorta like the mayan calender ending ^^

[Master Bluespike74]

I confess.  It is my ship.  It brought me here long ago so that I could consume the world's supplies of Chocolate and Beef Jerky.  Unfortunately, my mission is still not over as the cows breed faster than I can eat them.  I should have taken better care of my ship.  Oh well, I still have lightsabers to play with.

Can you tell that last night was a nice night at work??

[Luna]

Nice try Blue, but I'm claiming it as my temple

[Darth Rifter]

Hmm, clearly not an alien ship, as aliens have yet to be proven by science. I think it is some  sort of rock whittled away by currents.

[Noriko]

As cool as it would be, it's just EXTREMELY unlikely that this object is of extraterrestial origin.

Now it's getting a bit scientific. To me science is fun, for others it isn't. So feel free to ignore this post if you don't enjoy scientific considerations.

Let's start with the question, whether extraterrestial life exists. We know that life can develop under appropriate conditions; otherwise we wouldn't exist. The Milky Way alone contains a couple hundred billion stars, with a large fraction of them having planets (recent research suggests that the number of planets in the Milky Way is at least as large as the number of stars). A certain fraction of these planets will be habitable. And a fraction of these habitable planets will actually develop life. How large these fractions are is still very uncertain. But even if these fractions are tiny, with a few hundred billion stars in the Milky Way it is very probable that life has developed on a fair number of planets. When we consider the whole universe instead of just the Milky Way this probability is even higher. Given some time, we can assume that also intelligent life will develop.

So from a scientific point of view it is quite reasonable to assume the existence of extraterrestial life.

But does that mean that aliens will come to visit us?

Short answer: not likely.

Just for the fun of it, I've done some calculations. There is no sign of any intelligent extraterrestial life in our solar system. So we need to consider other solar systems. The closest planetary system is Alpha Centauri, which is 4.37 light years away; i.e. if you are travelling at the speed of light, you need 4.37 years to get there. How fast can we actually travel? I take Voyager 1 as example as it is the probe we have sent furthest away from earth. In 35 years Voyager 1 travelled 1.83×10¹⁰ km. That speed is about 18000 times slower that the speed of light. At that speed someone from Alpha Centauri would need to travel for almost 80000 years to reach us.

But let's assume the aliens have more advanced technology and can travel at one thousandth the speed of light. Then they would still need 4370 years for a one way trip to earth. We need to be realistic about the possible speed here. But even at the incredible speed of one hundredth the speed of light, it would take 437 years. And this is just the best case scenario with life existing in the closest planetary system. It's just not realistic that aliens will come to earth. It would be much more realistic for them to try to communicate with us instead of sending space ships.

So coming back to the object/rock that has been found: pretty much every explanation is much more likely than that thing being a space ship.

[Luna]

Noriko has brought logic. Also, if we discovered intelligent life on another planet and journeyed all the way there, would we just crash some ships, mess with some farmers, and leave? Highly doubtful. I believe this is just a rock formation or old temple.

[RogueLeader]

Aw c'mon Noriko! Can't I at least pretend aliens are real?

[Noriko]

Noriko has brought logic. Also, if we discovered intelligent life on another planet and journeyed all the way there, would we just crash some ships, mess with some farmers, and leave? Highly doubtful. I believe this is just a rock formation or old temple.

That's also a very good point.

Aw c'mon Noriko! Can't I at least pretend aliens are real?

Sure you can pretend.
And as I said, they do probably exist. Just not here on earth.

[Kham-Ryn Kurios]

Does the photo at the start of the thread, make anyone else think of the Engineer's ship in Alien and Prometheus?


Alien.

[RogueLeader]

 

Is that it?!

[ThreadJack]

I'm going with my original theory. That this was a Mayan prototype spaceship, that's discovery ties into the end of the world.

[Manroon]

I have to ask Noriko if that post accounts for the speed of the currently developing warp theory? And no, I don't have the link to the article, but we were discussing it a few weeks ago on here. There's some scientists that are working on the very, VERY, VERY basic principles of a functional warp engine. They have evidence it's possible to warp space, they just.... have no idea how to power the engine to do it. lol


Now I'm still saying this is the ship we crashed on Dathomir, and I'm expecting debris from Luke's T-65 to show up within ten years, and I don't think it's any other sort of ship than that. I do think there's life out there though, and with our luck, it'll be even dumber than us. PIGS IN SPACE!!! 

[Noriko]

I have to ask Noriko if that post accounts for the speed of the currently developing warp theory? And no, I don't have the link to the article, but we were discussing it a few weeks ago on here. There's some scientists that are working on the very, VERY, VERY basic principles of a functional warp engine. They have evidence it's possible to warp space, they just.... have no idea how to power the engine to do it. lol

No, I didn't take that into account. The last time I read something about warp drives, the theoretical calculations implied that the amount of energy needed for a warp engine would be higher than the total amount in the observable universe. Obviously this would make a warp engine impossible.

I didn't know about the article you mentioned. Now I have read some news articles about it. The problem with these kind of  articles is that they are usually very vague and sometimes even wrong. So I downloaded the scientific paper http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20110015936. I will read it and let you know what I think about it.