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Peter Jennings Seeing is Believing: UFOs (1 Viewer)

Will_B

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Paul, amazing you mentioned theoretical physicist Brian Greene because Green's outstanding NOVA special is exactly what I feel is what this Jennings special needed to be like!

Jennings' special had only about five minutes of theoretical physicist Michio Kaku on in the second hour, but in my opinion the only way to have made this special OUTSTANDING would have been if the entire second hour had been about modern physics.

As everyone here has noted, Jennings' special seemed to retread the whole 1970s In Search Of kind of UFO sightings that have been documented by other documentaries for years. The "interstellar visitors" theory has been done to death by other documentaries.

Yet the interdimensional theories, which became popular in the 1980s and remains the current popular theory, was only given five minutes of time? And even then, Kaku's comments were limited to concepts of bending space to arrive across vast distances via another dimension, there was hardly any mention of the possibility of life existing natively in other dimensions (which is something which Brian Greene's NOVA special touched on effectively).

I don't understand that decision to neglect more modern theories. Today, even the people who report alien encounters aren't talking about aliens arriving in spaceships, they're talking about time being distorted, of aliens walking through walls, of strange light effects -- they're describing a very David Lynch kind of experience which many of them say seems more likely to be some sort of crossover from another dimension than anything that could have been imagined in the 1950s (or 70s - not much difference there actually).

In short, my problem with the show was that it seemed to throw up its hands and say "well, if we describe modern theories, that will be too complicated, so let's go with the old 'aliens from another planet' theory instead." Resulting in a wholly unoriginal special. Why couldn't Jennings be as sophisticated as NOVA's Brian Greene special?

Ok, now I've ruined the objectivity of this thread. But I had to jump in because that Briane Greene special for NOVA (based on his book, The Elegant Universe) was excellent. (And it's only $11 at deepdiscountdvd by the way).
 

DaveF

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No way, man! We're the most advanced race in the universe, and if we can't get Out There, no way those extra-solar, knuckle-draggers can get here. Not for another epoch, or two.

Alas, I missed the show. I didn't even know it was on. It would have been fun. I loved Project Blue Book as a kid. And X-Files was great fun for the first seven seasons.
 

Inspector Hammer!

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Dave,
I don't quite know how to react to your post as I can't tell if your being sarcastically funny or serious, so i'll cover both senarios.

If your being funny, that's funny! :laugh:

If your being serious, at least you admit to the possibility of the exsistance of those "extra-solar knuckle-draggers". But as for the rest, again I hate spewing the same old line, but we don't know everthing. Perhaps your right and they haven't been here, but then again, maybe your wrong...and they have.

Who's to say?

It's also rather presumptuous to believe that we humans are the end all be all beings in the entire infinant universe. The universe is extremely LAAARRRGGGGGEEEEE, there could be anything out their.
 

DonRC

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No, there couldn't. There can't be anything out there that violates the physical laws of the universe. ;)
 

Inspector Hammer!

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Don,
I can see from your wink smiley that your being pseudo-serious and that you believe in what you said. But I don't put much stock in a concept that human beings came up with in the first place to explain things.

The laws of physics, as they are on this planet, may be set and finite, but does it occur to anyone that if an advanced civilazation exsists, they may have figured out a way to bend those laws using technology that we cannot even comprehend? We need to stop applying the rules of THIS planet and OUR species to that of other worlds and lifeforms, because, who knows, they may not even apply.

We do not know everyt...
 

Will_B

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Well you know what they say "you can't go against nature / because when you do / go against nature / you're part of nature too."

(Though I think that song was about gay sex, it applies to this discussion too).
 

DonRC

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I just can't help myself. I have to respond to a couple of different posts here. :)

In my mind, this actually argues against the idea that people have seen extraterrestrial visitors. It is ludicrous to think that extraterrestrial visitors would determine their methods of travel based on what people on earth considered most likely. However, when we look at reports of "sightings," that's exactly what happens. When the general feeling of what an extraterrestrial visitation would look like involves flying saucers/spaceships/etc., that's what people tend to see. Later, when that particular possibility falls out of fashion and is replaced by the idea of time distortions/interdimensional doorways/wormhole travel/etc., that's what people claim to see. It seems that the most logical and most likely explanation is that people's minds interpret what they see in terms of what they expect to see. Therefore, somebody sees an elliptical weather balloon, somewhat lacking in detail because of distance, atmospheric distortion, whatever and... voila! It's a flying saucer because they "know" about flying saucers. Later, somebody else sees something coming through an interdimensional doorway because they "know" about interdimensional doorways and for some reason (fatigue is a common one) didn't think about something that was hidden by a heat mirage becoming visible.
 

Michael Martin

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While I don't have a definite opinion on whether there is intelligent, scientifically advanced life "out there," I"m firmly on Don's and Jack's side with looking at this issue. There simply isn't enough solid evidence that earth is or has been visited by alien spacecraft.

I also agree that the ABC special was just high gloss on stuff we've already seen or read about. I do have a quick question, though: was there ever a good debunking of the Arizona lights? I remember seeing the videotaped footage, but never heard if it was ever proven to be terrestial.

Any beings intelligent and advanced enough to cross the huge distances of space quickly and safely aren't likely to hide from us (and please save me the Star Trek references). Whether they're friendly or hostile, it's extremely doubtful that anything we could throw at them would be sufficiently damaging or dangerous enough to warrant such caution. It's the one thing that the movie Independence Day got right. :D
 

DaveF

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Of the multitude of (hypothetical) alien races inhabiting the universe, one of them is the most advanced.

That's us. We're the universe's top dog. When these alleged other civilizations develop the ability to write, and write sci-fi, it's us they will unknowingly have in mind. We're the ones who will take warp technology to stupid, emotional, barbaric creatures, who still hold money central to their way of life. It will be us they will take blurry, questionable photographs of.

Our sci-fi, though, is all bunk. There's no one/thing more advanced than us in the physical universe.

---------------------------------------------

The contemporary view of the alien life says it's "them" who is more advanced. Humans are the lowest rung, and we will struggle to be accepted, or avoid destruction, by these entities.

Well, why? What if we're the most advanced? What if Earth was the first inhabitable planet formed? And we're the first intelligent race to come about and start nosing about in space?

It's a moot point, anyway. We're all alone. :)
 

TonyD

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dave how can you say we are all alone with such confidence?

there is no way we could ever know that.
there is no way to prove one side or the other on it.

there is so much out there how can there not be something else somewere?
 

Lew Crippen

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There are two completely different things John: the possibility of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe and (if it exists) the possibility that we may have been visited (and are continuing to be visited by that life).

The first concept is seriously believed by almost every scientist with any credentials (at least those I have read). The existence of other life is taken so seriously that we send physical messages (space probes with Chuck Berry, for example) and search for the possibility of extra-terresital life with programs like SETI (you can join in, if you like).

In short, almost everyone believes.

But far fewer believe in continnuning visits. In addition to the problem with the physical laws (as we understand them), there is little credible evidence to support the existence of these ongoing visits. And less still that is capable of being verified.

And one final thing: suppose that alien life forms did indeed find a way to overcome (what we understand to be) the physical laws of the universe (such as the constraints of the speed of light). They would be doing so continually in our solar system as well as elsewhere.

Given that we are able to find planets in other star systems if these violations were occurring on a routine basis, someone or thing ought to have been able to detect this by now.

If we go into the we can’t detect it because we don’t know anything about it we are off into the “I believe that there is an invisible and otherwise undectable elf on the top of the Washington Monument” The fact that no one can find it, does not mean that it does not exist.

Possible, I suppose but unlikely to any rational degree.
 

Will_B

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Don, I think we actually have filmmakers like David Lynch to thank for the way views of alien encounters have changed. But follow me on this one, because I don't come to the same conclusion as you did:

What if it is not that people are using the fictional portrayals of other dimensions, etc, as the source material for fantasies, but rather, what if the language and imagery of fiction is providing the ability to come closer to an accurate interpretation of what is occurring?

That is, you show a compact disc to a caveman, and he'll think he is looking at a small pool of water. Give him a few centuries of cutting rocks open, and he'll think he is looking at either a small pool of water -or- a big piece of mica (the silvery flaky rock). Give him a few centuries of technology, and he'll likely think he is looking at either a mirror or a storage device. Then laugh and tell him it isn't a CD at all but a DVD.

What I am saying is that if the so-called aliens are actually something not native to our reality, then perhaps we might depend upon what our culture and arts have provided us with in order to form an interpretation of what we are seeing. So what people report shifts, gradually, as we gain a greater dexterity of language and concepts.

In short, there seems to be a huge mental mind-boff (pardon my slang) going on, which to me would have been a great subject for documentary.

(That might be a highfalutin theory...there is a more mundane theory which is simply that early reports of alien encounters weren't as "strange" as reports from the 1980s onward simply because the people who were writing books in the early days purposefully left out the "strange" parts. But once people started writing in their own words - most famously with Whitley Striber in the mid 1980s, a man who was already a writer so had no need of having someone else write his story - the cat was out of the bag and a wealth of details about time distortions, odd feelings, the whole gamut of "high strangeness" stuff was no longer being kept in check.

Either way, we've somehow arrived at a time when the view of alien encounters is different than it was decades ago, and I think that the Jennings report should have gone into it).
 

DonRC

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It's also possible that the stories became stranger from the 1980s onward because the people writing those stories were influenced by the use of... uh... "artificial mental stimulation" in the 60's and 70's. :D
 

Jean D

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I would like to have seen stuff on the implants people have gotten from alleged close encounters of the 3rd kind (the ones made of materials not found on earth).
or the Crop Circles (the ones where by some form of radiation change the genetic makeup of the crop within that crop circle shape. Those things have yet to be explained I believe. And are interesting. Things that haven't really been talked about much. And the show would have been better if they got people willing to describe more of what they believe happened to them during the abduction. or played actually anonymous hypnotism recordings.

In general the show didn't touch on anything new at all. And wasn't impressive.
 

DonRC

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Well... I watched Independence Day the other day. Will Smith's character does make a comment about the alien's dreadlocks hanging out as he drags him around wrapped in a parachute... :laugh:
 

Lew Crippen

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Actually I do—this is a very mischievous elf. I attribute many of the otherwise inexplicable actions in Congress, the White House and the various governmental departments (such as State) to pranks being played by the elf. I note for the record, that the elf plays these pranks regardless of political party or individual philosophy.

This is me is makes more sense than many of the reasons given to explain actions and decisions. ;)
 

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