Question of the Day - 021706

[Velvet]

According to Harper's Index, 11% of Americans believe they have seen a UFO. Have you?

I have. Matter of fact I was less than a metre away from it.

[Booche]

I was 8 years old, so take that for whatever it's worth.

[mattm]

I've never seen one but something flew over my head one night. It had a humming kind of sound (like a flying saucer in a movie to tell the truth) and was about ten feet above my head. I heard it approach, fly over and then disapear in the distance. I thought I might have accidentaly smoked crack except that the dog growled at first then wimpered and hid behind my legs while it was overhead then he growled again. My dog's actions scared me more than the sound. This was out in the country back home and very dark (not city dark, real dark where you actually can't see anything).

When my dad was young and camping in roughly the same area him and his buddies saw something damn weird in the sky and about two years before I was born my mom saw a light in the sky that shouldn't have been there (so did a bunch of other people and it was in the local newspaper the next day).

This is neat:

1) The number of galaxies.

An estimated 50 billion galaxies are visible with modern telescopes and the total number in the universe must surely exceed this number by a huge factor, but we will be conservative and simply double it. That's 100,000,000,000 galaxies in the universe.

2) The number of stars in an average galaxy.

As many as hundreds of billions in each galaxy.

Lets call it just 100 billion.

That's 100,000,000,000 stars per galaxy.

3)The number of stars in the universe.

So the total number of stars in the universe is roughly 100 billion x 100 billion.

That's 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars, 10 thousand, billion, billion. Properly known as 10 sextillion. And that's a very conservative estimate.

4) The number of stars that have planetary systems.

The original extra-solar system planet hunting technology dictated that a star needed to be to close to us for a planet to be detected, usually by the stars 'wobble'. Better technology that allows us to measure the dimming of a stars brightness when a planet crosses its disk has now revolutionised planet hunting and new planets are being discovered at an ever increasing rate. So far (August 2003) around 100 have been discovered so we have very little data to work on for this estimate. Even so, most cosmologists believe that planetary formation around a star is quite common place. For the sake of argument let us say it's not and rate it at only one in a million and only one planet in each system, as we want a conservative estimate, not an exaggerated one. That calculation results in:

10,000,000,000,000,000 planets in the universe. Ten million, billion, as a conservative estimate.

5) The number planets capable of supporting life. Let's assume that this is very rare among planets and rate it at only one in a million. Simple division results in:

10,000,000,000 planets in the universe capable of producing life. Ten billion!

From Here

That's almost word for word what my highschool physics teacher told us when we asked him about life other than ours.

hehehe, [color:red]sextillion. I'm 27 but for some reason I still had a little chuckle at the number.

[guigsy]

yes.

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Just remember that you're standing on a planet

That's evolving and revolving at 900 miles an hour

That's orbiting at 90 miles a second, so it's reckoned

The sun that is the source of all our power

The Sun and you and me, and all the stars that we can see

Are moving at a million miles a day

In an outer spiral arm, at 40,000 miles an hour

Of a galaxy we call the Milky Way

Our Galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars

It's a hundred thousand lightyears side to side

It bulges in the middle,16,000 lightyears thick

But out by us it's just 3,000 lightyears wide

We're 30,000 lightyears from galactic central point

We go round every 200 million years

And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions

In this amazing and expanding universe

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding

In all of the directions it can whizz

As fast as it can go, the speed of light you know

Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is

So remember when you're feeling very small and insecure

How amazingly unlikely is your birth

And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space

Coz there's bugger all down here on Earth

[Calamity Jane]

I've always loved Douglas Adams' / Ford Prefect's explanation for UFOs seen by us earthlings:

"But how did you get there in the first place then?"

"Easy, I got a lift with a teaser."

"A teaser?"

"Yeah."

"Er, what is ..."

"A teaser? Teasers are usually rich kids with nothing to do. They cruise around looking for planets which haven't made interstellar contact yet and buzz them."

"Buzz them?" Arthur began to feel that Ford was enjoying making life difficult for him.

"Yeah", said Ford, "they buzz them. They find some isolated spot with very few people around, then land right by some poor soul whom no one's ever going to believe and then strut up and down in front of him wearing silly antennae on their heads and making beep beep noises. Rather childish really." Ford leant back on the mattress with his hands behind his head and looked infuriatingly pleased with himself.

[Esau]

I have.

Although I was smoking DMT at the time.

[bouche]

i'm sure I've posted this ufo investigation before, but I'm mr.G !

check out my awesome sketch of the sighting!!

[c-towns]

I'm not sure I would trust any answers on this subject from the members of this board.

[Birdy]

i have. i was sixteen or so.. laying on my hammock on the clearest of blue days.

my brother has some serious UFO stories. don't know if i trust the source or not though

[djmelbatoast]

Most lights I see in the sky are unidentified to me. For some reason the control tower stopped calling me everytime something flew overhead. The bastards.

[Calamity Jane]

Mike, that was a fascinating read (though I only got through about half of it)

How cool would it be to be a UFO investigator!!! It's amazing that people are paid to take wingnuts like you seriously!

WITNESS BACKGROUND CHECK

Mr. G’s description of the weather aspects coincides with the description I retrieved from the online database giving credence to his observational skills. He has an excellent educational background of completing high school in Ontario in 1990, and then attended St. Lawrence College in Kingston, ON for a 3 year Civil/Environmental Engineering Program. Afterwards he enrolled in Computer Sciences at the same college and began developing software professionally in 1997 in Ottawa. Mr. G states that he has perfect vision and doesn’t wear contacts or glasses. He also states, in an e-mail reply, that, “we were out for some beers here and there, but “none were consumed heavily, and we had not had anything to drink on Friday (See e-mail reference #5).†Mr. G states his hearing is fine. He also states he has had no previous unidentified sightings, and states there were no psychological or physiological effects as a result of this sighting. His time of sighting and time of arrival in Smith Falls Ontario, coincides with the time and distance required to travel between the location of the sighting and his home, which I calculated using map software on my computer, therefore giving more credence to his observations.

but that's exactly what those little green fellas want you to think...you're just fine, you weren't abducted and anal-probed and you certainly are not unwittingly doing their job of undermining the human race and colonizing human minds by getting them addicted to internet message boards....

[backbacon]

check out my awesome sketch of the sighting!!

Sweet! New desktop!

[payce-ley]

yes... made no sound crossed lake ontario in seconds, pretty much stopped (seemed to glide) only a few hundred feet up... was emitting sparks... zipped off superfast, still silent... was 18 and with a friend

and at 7 or 8 a friend and I were sitting chattin on the swing out back and got entirely enveloped in green light... like floating... middle of the day... neither of us could see or hear nothing but green, including each other and the swings we were sitting on... then all was fine... beside us wonderin what the freakin hell... never been sure what to make of that one

don't know if either were extra terrestrial but they were sure unidentified

ball lightening is super cool but I wouldn't call it ufo-like (weirds me out scientists still don't admit it exists)... saw about 6 balls bounce off a lake and over my truck drinking on a beach in a storm... highly recommended

[Lazlo]

I see UFOs everyday in my shit.

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Gives "anal probe" a whole new meaning. Are you suggesting they have laboratories in your ass? Sure would solve all the sloppiness around abduction.

[bokonon]

I think those would be unidentified floating objects.

[Lazlo]

It used to fly...