Never trust a story which relies on journalists understanding statistics. What the scientists seem to be trying to say is that with a sample of 1 planet (Earth) you can't make any definite predictions about how common life is, which is perfectly fair.

But there's a lot of space and even if the probability of life is very low there are an awful lot of stars out there and our observations to date suggest that it is the norm for stars to have multiple planets orbiting them (note that the caption for the first photograph is wrong, there are 100 billion stars in the Milky Way, the number of planets could easily be 5 or 6 times that number).

Also our attempts to discover how likely, or otherwise, life is are in their infancy, we've barely even scratched the surface of Mars to see if it once held life (it almost certainly once had liquid oceans) and there are places like Europa, our back garden in cosmic terms, where the search for life may be fruitful, but we don't know just because the oceans that we think are there are 500 million miles away and covered in 10km of ice.

You know i would need to post on this lol

Here is a link to John Greenwood Jr who spent 9 years researching classified Archived documents from various different departments within the US government via the freedom of info act.

What he finds confirms the coverup and also interdepartmental conflicts of the subject and the facts about roswell etc.

All his data is only from government files nothing else.

Its a good long watch 1 hour or so as it discusses other subjects in detail.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7408692026357341951#

Aye the yanks. Tends to be the yanks that delve into this.

What a difference a day makes......

I got a feeling of Deja Vu from this post.

I almost feel like I've read this post before

I got a sense of Deja Vu from reading this post

I feel like I've already read this post..

Hey, it's those bloody yanks...again.

Really if you have the time and interest watch the video.

The 3digit agencys in the US all have good data that from freedom of info act proves the cover up.

Ie the roswell crash 'story changed 3 times' latests version incldues high altitude dummies that werent made untill 6 years after roswell

Dont get me wrong they do a dammed good job in dis info and sways the left brained containers easily away from the facts .

We have skirted this topic before, but what is this 'left brained' idea?

If we are talking about the hypothesis that the 'right brain' is the creative, unconstrained one and the 'left brain' the logical, rules based one I understand the idea. The theory follows that Right Brainers should become Journalists and Artists, and Left Brainers should be Engineers and Accountants.

But I think the idea that people are somehow trapped in one thinking paradigm or another is as ridiculous as the next broad generalisation. To me its like suggesting that left handed people can't play the Piano. What's your understanding, Jonny?

And please don't communicate your understanding by the medium of a 1 hour YouTube or a pageful of links.

I'm still blaming the yanks.

As I have already stated youtube is now a valid media source for the general public to express their view.

Many of 'youtube' links are totally bogus and invalid which is logical as there are many sad people out their with nothing better to do than talk trash or fake things in all aspects from A-Z.

On the other hand its also a good source of genuine data from all aspects of life which I learn from on a daily basis ie ' IT related problems that I cant solve myself, stock trading technical analysis lessons, TegDC5 how to do's & finally the subject matter of the op the alien discussion!

However the link I provided wasnt youtube anyway it was google video

If you watched the full video its clear that 'what the public is told is bogus' And all 3 digit agencys do not know what the others know! All from freedom of info act one man passions over 9 years proved this its all to be seen, believe it or not the documents are their which back up ufolgy.

The problem or question we have now is ' who is in control of this situation' some claim 'iluminati' others say a shadow government. I personally believe the second of the 2 control as it would be ilogical to front your conrtol with a name.


In my opinion Money = power = control as any buisness would work! For example what exactly are the bilderbergers group function?

When you have the money and power, control is the next logical step.

Look at iraq for example parliment qoute ' Iraq have nuclear or bio logical weapons that could launch within 24 hours'

Did we find any evidence of this 'no' but we were 'bulied' by our buddies to united a war for the the oil.

Rant done more to come!

There are two points about using youtube as a reference.

The first is that like everything else, most of it is crap. A professionally produced video program might look wonderful, but it carries limited information. Spooky music and flash graphics don't add anything but noise to what is basically a bloke putting his point of view to a camera. Interviews tell you no more than what the interviewer asks - whether he's pro or anti - and what the interviewee wants to say. Doesn't matter whether he's genuine, whether he thinks he's genuine, or if he's simply mischievous - the basic message is one bloke telling another bloke what the second bloke wants to hear.
We've already discussed the shortcomings of video - and particularly the compressed video used on youtube. Anything you see on there is *not* evidence of anything. If you showed me images of flying saucers on the White House lawn I will remain skeptical - noting merely that Hollywood has been doing that since the fifties; that Industrial Light and Magic could knock something up in no time - indeed, that any bright kid with an artistic flair and access to the game engine developer kits could bash something together...

The second point may be more relevant. Few of us have the time to waste watching an hour-long video, particularly when the actual content is padded out with special effects and such-like, and grabbing it in small chunks as and when you have the time simply doesn't work. A hundred page written piece carries ten times the information and can be scanned rapidly, returned to, backtracked as necessary. It can also include primary references - though it is in itself of course no more evidential than the video version.

So while I would agree that youtube is a valid media for someone to express an opinion, I don't believe that is a primary news source, a valid evidential resource, or in general anything more than a waste of my valuable time.

Barnacle is bang on the money. The reason I don't want youtube (or Google video or Live Leak or any other video site) is that its a very time consuming way of putting across an opinion. Similar with rafts of links - unless they are to something serious - i.e. peer reviewed and accepted by a publisher with standards - then I'm not interested. You only need to spend 3 minutes on twitter (or, for that matter, this forum) to realise that there is a lot of crap on the internets.

Anyhow, I note that you managed to write a lengthy post without once touching on the question I'd asked. Again.

The problem with YouTube, and indeed a lot of TV programmes, was neatly demonstrated by an American teen called Nathan Zohner in 1997 when, aged 14, he won his school's science fair by lecturing his classmates on a dangerous chemical called Dihydrogen Monoxide.

He explained to his class, at length, that DHMO inhalation causes thousands of deaths every year, that it can cause severe, in some cases fatal, burns, that it's a major constituent of acid rain, it exacerbates the greenhouse effect and now so endemic that every river in the US has at least trace amounts of it, often much more.

He went on to explain that it's used in the distribution of pesticides and that even after washing fruit and vegetables will still be contaminated by it.

In spite of all of this DHMO is still widely used in industry, often as a coolant, but can even be found in the food industry and the US government has taken no action to stop or limit its use or distribution.

At the end of his presentation Zohner put to a vote the proposition that the US government should ban the sale and use of DHMO. The proposition won support from 86% of his classmates, with 12% undecided and only 2% voting against the proposition.

Zohner's project was entitled, "How gullible are we?" and although everything he said was absolutely factually true he had convinced 86% of his peers to try to outlaw water.

And so with YouTube, every time you watch a video there you've got no idea if watching somebody who is doing their very best to present a balanced view, or who has carefully sifted through the evidence to find that which supports their own view and is presenting it the manner most beneficial to them.

As another great example, if you've got time to do some reading, have a look at Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy blog going through a Fox TV 'documentary' examining if the moon landings were a hoax.

Plait is a good science writer and, as you'll see from the eidts on the page, scrupulously honest about admitting his own errors and mistakes, but if you watched the documentary without his knowledge you might well reach the end feeling that the evidence that moon-landings were a hoax is overwhelming.

Did you mean 'edits' there, Andrew?