MovieChat Forums > Fire in the Sky (1993) Discussion > travel a billion light years and for wha...

travel a billion light years and for what?


In the movies why do aliens always travel across space and time just to anal probe country bumkins and perform terrible experiments? Don't they have anything better to do in the whole universe?

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Not that I personally believe in aliens visiting Earth to do experiments etc. on humans, but your understanding of the physics involved needs adjusting.

The only constant in the Universe is the speed of light, also known as c. Time and space are not fixed but flexible. If you travel at a speed very near c or c itself (assuming this is possible for an advanced alien civilization), time essentially slows down, but only for the individuals doing the travel at the speed close to c. If you travel at c, time basically stops but only for you. So, a trip of lightyears would be nearly instantaneous. For those you left behind and for those at the destination of your travel, time has progressed as normal.

So, while it would make no sense to travel such enormous distances in a human perspective with the practical propulsion technologies known to us, the same does not apply for someone able to travel at lightspeed or very close to it.

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.. and any sort of a particle that has mass requires infinite energy to achieve light speed, according to current physics; so no time-travel, or light-speed travel for anyone in the universe yet (and there's a lot more to it).

Why can light travel at light-speed, is a whole different question:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060925105535AAjlwIo
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/ParticleAndNuclear/photon_mass.html
http://van.physics.illinois.edu/qa/listing.php?id=1424

99% of new films are garbage

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What if travling 1 billion miles was as effortless as us driving to a zoo or to our backyard? Would mean nothing to us. Some people go to the zoo was peace and quiet, some go to see the animals, some go to interact with the animals, and a few go to do bad things to the anmials.

WTF?

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.. and any sort of a particle that has mass requires infinite energy to achieve light speed


Put another way, every single galaxy, star, planet, molecule, atom, quark and electron in the universe turned to pure energy (a good trick if you could do it, as the energy-converting influence would also need to be faster than light) won't accelerate a massive object to the speed of light.



The restitution of life is no great feat. A variety of deaths may well enter into your punishment

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thoso said: "time essentially slows down ... for the individuals doing the travel at ... c, If you travel at c ... a trip of lightyears would be nearly instantaneous"

Your understanding of special relativity and reference frames is incorrect.

However:
Based on my frame of reference sitting here on earth, depending on which star system the aliens departed from it would take thousands to millions of years for them traveling at the speed of light to reach me on earth. Meaning that also from their frame of reference on their home world, they would have no idea that I was going to exist on earth thousands to millions of years in their future, so for them to have knowledge to travel exactly to this solar system out of the entire universe would be highly unlikely.

And to further put a wrench in the works, nothing that has mass can travel at the speed of light. A space ship and the aliens inside it have mass. The only way the aliens could travel at the speed of light would be to convert themselves into a massless energy/wave. Which would essentially be impossible to do.

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I REALLY dont want to get into the UFO debate but I feel like you are shorting yourself by thinking that the laws we think are 100% exactly the way we think they are, might be meaningless to a being that had a 13 billion head start.

I heard it once like this and im gonna butcher it:

Think of the 1% between humans and primates.
That 1% allows us to travel the heavens, splice atoms, and all sorts of things that a primate JUST CANNOT understand. Why, it would all be magic to him *IF* he could fully understand it!

Now think of 1% smarter than us!
We could not fathom the intelligence, the machinery, the ability of those beings. We would assume it was 'magic', or that they were 'gods' who had come to visit.

We could certainly understand 'alien beings/smarter than us' but if they left us a UFO and said we could reverse engineer it...what on Earth makes us think we could?!

And for that matter, how could we 'talk' to them or even understand them? We cannot talk to any creature thats shared this Earth with us since our beginning, why would we be able to communicate with them? We'd have to hope that with their intelligence, THEY would have a way to simplify things enough for us to understand.

Just my take on what you said...

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Good points. During the past 200 years of our history people have made scientific discoveries which other people overlooked or thought of as being impossible. I have no doubt there is more to learn.



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That is an excellent point & real food for thought.

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Why is every one dismissing interdemensional travel or warp drives.

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You're an idiot.

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Hmm, well, it'd make more sense to abduct country bumpkins, as you put it, than people from built up areas, no?

Aliens would probably want to avoid being shot at by military aircraft, so the best place for that, would be out in the middle of no where

Plus, assuming they didn't want to attract TO much attention, they would do it in the country.

As for travelling across space, to them, it might be like crossing the street, rather than a vast distance as WE perceive it to be.

Imagine a time when you had to spend weeks on trains to go from one side of the USA, to the other, now it's done in a matter of hours.

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Uh, how would you know? They're aliens xD, and its not like they were hunting them down. If you watch the movie more closely, he runs from out of the car and to the weird lights like an overzealous idiot. Lets not forget the logic of sentient beings from another solar system would probably be completely different than our own.

If aliens are advanced and can travel to our planet via some exotic propulsion system or a wormhole, then there's no reason to believe they can even be shot down by our conventional weaponry. I'd assume evasion or the ability not to be seen would come fairly easy. To the point where only a close encounter would be the only possible way to confirm their existence.

Why would they care about attracting attention in the first place?

I agree.

Yep.

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Well what is the human race was dying and there was some deep sea life that had hints of a biological compound that cured or staved off the disease?

We would send a team down into the deep sea to get animals and do tests, but what if it only worked under those depths? And what if we sent trained volunteers to stay down there isolated for years working on this?

And they kind of lost their minds? And their housekeeping sense?

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Think of human beings travelling to the most remote, forbidding edge of the earth - Antarctica - to study the very humblest creatures in existence - microbes.

==JJS==

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It's really bizarre how most people assume that these aliens are from another planet or galaxy. Earth and it's inhabitants are not important enough to make such a journey. It's more likely that these beings have been with us all along. Probably from another dimension, from the moon or hidden areas within our Earth. Perhaps all three and I don't think they are friendly or "enlightened" at all!










Live Full & Die Empty. Tap Your Potential and Realise Your Dreams!

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It's really bizarre how most people assume that these aliens are from another planet or galaxy.


It's unsettling how deep the conditioning has gone.



I got news for 'em. There's gonna be hell to pay. 'Cause I ain't Daddy's little boy no more.

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"from the moon" oh brother! are you in jr high?

suzycreamcheese RIP Heath Ledger 1979-2008

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It is not impossible that there is an alien presence on the dark side of the moon. In fact, Hollywood is known for being an arm of the Illuminati elite and reveal such things to the public through Hollywood blockbusters such as the third Transformers movie.

Try to be more than a member of the sheeple (look the word up).

Try.



In response to:


bydbrockskk1 » 3 minutes ago (Wed Apr 30 2014 15:59:02)
IMDb member since May 2012

"from the moon" oh brother! are you in jr high?







Live Full & Die Empty. Tap Your Potential and Realize Your Dreams!

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suspicion confirmed YOU are in jr high. We were Pacific Air Command Air Force and Strategic Air Command. (PACAF, SAC) I live near League City which is about 5 minutes from NASA. Give it up. There is no life on the moon. I'm a schoolteacher. I wouldn't let you or anyone like you anywhere near my students.

suzycreamcheese RIP Heath Ledger 1979-2008

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[deleted]

In the movies why do aliens always travel across space and time just to anal probe country bumkins and perform terrible experiments? Don't they have anything better to do in the whole universe

As one of the "aliens" on the trip portrayed in this movie I'd like to set the record straight. First of all, we didn't just probe the Earthling and perform experiments on him. One fact the director conveniently left out of the movie is that that Travis actually tried to STEAL one of our human testing kits! Our behaviors following this incident must be considered in light of this outrageous breach of inter-species protocol. Secondly, you imply that the experiments we conduct on members of your rural communities are the PRINCIPAL REASON for our trips to your planet. Ha! This is like saying that male humans participate in the act of coitus so that they can fall asleep afterwards! Preposterous! In human speak, it's all about THE JOURNEY. Sure, we abducted some rural people! We also visited the Great Wall of China, the Pyramids of Egypt, and spent some time down in New Orleans for Mardi Gras. I hope you keep these facts in mind the next time you feel the need to write about us.

There are no problems that cannot be solved with a can of brake clean and a lighter

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LMAO

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We assume they must have traveled to earth from some far flung galaxy. But I have a theory; not only are they from here. I believe those aliens that nabbed Travis out in the woods are the reincarnated hillbillies from Deliverence. That's why they are so keen on having butt sex with him and sticking needles in his eye! This here river don't go to Aintree...you done taken a wrong turn.

Jeff K
Full time dreamer.
"Excuses are like buttholes - everybody has one and they all stink."

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As one of the REAL aliens on the trip portrayed in this movie (the poster named Grizzly101, above, is a faker), I'd like to really set the record straight. We did not travel a billion light years, for one thing. That's an exaggeration. We travelled more like a million light years, give or take. And we didn't go to earth to anal probe earthlings from rural areas - that's of no value to us. And it's gross.

We went ended up on earth only because we took a wrong turn at the Andromeda Galaxy and found ourselves stuck in the vicinity of earth without enough fuel to get back to our own galaxy. Fortunately for us, our AAA membership from a previous stopover was still good, and we were soon on our way again, no worse for wear. We dropped Travis off before we left, as he was a smoker and we no longer allow smoking on our intergalactic flights.

Best wishes,

[NAME NOT TRANSLATABLE]


My real name is Jeff

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grizleys was funnier.

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Well we do the same with bears and other animals, including tagging them so study their migration patterns.

Plus we went to the moon to bring back rocks, though politically motivated. As well it's the same thing with Mars. We are boldly going where no one has gone before to seek out more and more rocks.

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I think we have wandered off from the OP's question. His/her question wasn't about the space-time travel, but about the aliens' ultimate goal to be here.

I don't think a civilization which is thousands or maybe millions of years ahead of us would want to do medieval experiments on us too. If anything, they would preserve the Earth like a zoo. Even if they did experiments, they would have been a lot less intrusive with their superior technology and code of ethics.

Excuse my English please, not a native speaker.

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I'm sorry to say this, but what always happens when two cultures meet and one is much more technologically advanced than the other? Preserve the earth like a zoo? I doubt it.

My real name is Jeff

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I'm sorry to say this, but what always happens when two cultures meet and one is much more technologically advanced than the other? Preserve the earth like a zoo? I doubt it.

We keep zoos of animals less advanced then us don't we?

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why do aliens always travel across space and time just to anal probe country bumkins and perform terrible experiments?


From the Trivia section:
The real Travis later in life revealed that his penis and testicles were replaced with identical parts, but with enhancements to improve his chances at having babies on Earth with enhanced sex drive.

Now you know why.
It seems even in space it is known that the males of the human species are frigid and need more drive.

---
Lincoln Lee: I lost a partner.
Peter Bishop: I lost a universe!

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From the Trivia section:
The real Travis later in life revealed that his penis and testicles were replaced with identical parts,


I wonder if the aliens perform sex-changes too? LoL

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