Well, it is a forbidden topic and I'm going to put it as objectively as I possibly can, but there's a certain, highly variable (based on region, time period, culture, ancestry, etc.) thing sparked by the imagination of our species and perhaps a few other hominid species, although certainly not all, due to the creativity often exhibited by our species which creates certain beliefs which our species then fervently follows as fact and guideline and several of these variable systems, including the single most widely-believed system in the modern world, often comes with beliefs stating we were created in a certain image and that we are unique and/or dominant over the rest of the natural world. I won't name names, I won't state opinions, and I'm not trying condemn anything falling under this topic, but factually, this, and a general combination of the obstinate, egoistic tendencies of our species are among the primary factors for the disbelief in anything new and/or completely odd and universally life/mind-altering.

I don't think the telescope is powerful enough, but vegetation is life. Just not intelligent life that most people expect to be right there. We have proved that all life doesn't need to be carbon based from some bacteria, so I think that is really what scientists are looking for first, bacteria on other planets, carbone based or not.

Though if alien life was discovered it could potentially ruin many people's lives due to it ruining their religion, but that is another story. But I believe that we already know if there is intelligent life, but we don't release the info because it could be tragic to the public.

And who exactly could withhold all this information from the rest of the world?

I know that, which is why i'm asking.

Life to some peoples standards is living walking talking people like you and I, just different in a [censored]load of ways. I'll believe theres aliens when I see anything like this, until then I honestly couldn't care less if there was or not.

Why, the Illuminati, of course! :shifty:


I'd say powerful world governments in control of the few nations with the resources to actually discover and prove such a thing, but I don't think it's very likely that we have any concrete proof of this information and I question whether governments would actually try to hush up all this info, but they might... just maybe.

Every government would have to be in on the conspiracy to hide alien secrets from the whole world. Why would governments that try to blow each other up, would somehow lay down arms to get in a big room about how they are going to keep aliens secret from the public? Think about it. The US government couldn't keep the Watergate scandal or the Lewinsky scandal secret. What makes anyone think that the US could keep aliens secret? Oh wait, I forgot! UFO's only crash in America.

Watergate and the Lewinsky scandal were only something within the interests of the executive branch of the U.S. government to keep quiet, definitely not something on the scale of shattering some people's lifelong thoughts on human existence worldwide. I'm just playing devil's advocate, here, and don't think it would be something that would be covered up, but you never know and I'm sure there are definitely true things world governments, including the U.S. government, have covered up... but since they are so well covered up, I cannot name them or I cannot name anything recent, as some such things leak out after a while. Take Britain's Zimmerman Telegram, for example.

I think the US alone, could be others, is probally hiding aliens. I wouldn't be surprised if there were people who live in the depths of area 51 to make it seem like it is abondoned. Governments don't have to tell all there secrets to other nations.

@Seti18

Alright then, take the moon landing for example. Some people (can you believe it?) still think the moon landings were faked. There is no way that the US government could fool everyone and every country in the world. Neither could they get them to be quiet about it either. I bet more than half the countries around the world would love to show what phonies the US is.

I don't doubt that there are some things that are kept secret. But something so huge as to proof of intelligent life is just too far-fetched.

It seems that the government always tries to hide things though. They dismiss any evidence to UFO's or not, and way back when like Roswell, they went in and moved all of the debris rather quickly. And now no one really cares about it.

Or the nazi's bell ship thingy. That was a good secret, and pretty much still is. I think the US is great at keeping secrets, and I believe that some of their slips and controversies may be on purpose, they just want you to believe what you believe.

No, I can't believe it and it's rather funny to think people do believe that and I believe you are indeed right about what other governments would love to prove about the U.S., but as I said, just playing devil's advocate. It is possible if the U.S. Government, for example, were they the one and only government to get some evidence, I may think, but not very plausible. I don't think they're actually covering up anything now or that such a thing would be covered up, but you never really know and it's all just speculation. What I'd love to personally witness is the world's reaction to the unveiling of said information, if or when we finally found evidence of what I believe would be impossible to be false. What do you think that would be like?

Exactly. They don't know its mass, so they can't determine its density. That means it may not even have a solid surface and they have little idea what it's made of. It's just the closest they've come to confirming that there's any chance that a planet outside our solar system may be habitable.

Well like I said, I think that they do cover it up, but if it were to be released people would go crazy religiously and in other ways.

It would probably be similar to how people reacted when science proved the earth was not flat, or when it was proved that the Earth circled the sun. Society did not collapse, Governments were not destroyed. Paradigms just shifted is all. That's what we need right now.

I hope 2012 ends up being a reveal that we've been working with aliens all this time and been working on a space ship all this time so we could go there.

Then those of us not surprised go right back to playing our video games and shrug it off like anything else.

Not me! I'd be the first to say "Get me off this planet and onto a new one, I don't care if it's a one-way trip!"

Y'know, what little we know of this planet is from twenty odd million years ago, so it's certainly possible that even if it was habitable at that time and we managed to open a wormhole there tomorrow, it's entirely possible that the place has been rendered uninhabitable somehow. In fact, an entire species could evolve, rise, and fall within a fraction of that time.

Kepler-22b is only 587 light years away, so what we see from here is light that bounced off that planet 587 years ago. It may take a million years for us to get there with current technology, but what we see now, it might not be much different.

Sorry, got numbers mixed up :facepalm:. Between reading stuff related to this and the time travel thread, I've had a bunch of them go through my head recently. They must have gotten turned around and lost their way in the mess .

Maybe they encountered beings similiar to themselves and that's how they got so far away.

It seems like every month or so they find an "earth-like/habitable" planet. Not really news anymore tbh

It's okay, I got your Skyrim reference, even if nobody else did.

"Hi, my name is Sammi, and I'm a Skyrim addict."

"Hi, Sammi."

Thank you !
I'm sure most got it but this is a scientific kind of thread...ya know.

"I used to like to 'dance close to the fire', but then I took an _____ __ ___ ____." (original I think, but I couldn't bear to actually spell it out completely)

Lets shoot some monkeys to the planet. If they live then we know.