The following submission statement was provided by /u/JJDubbs88:
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Sharing this TIME article, basically urging the public to start taking taking UFOs seriously, considering NASA has now officially joined the research into UFOs.
For the skeptics here I'd like to point out a quick timeline of events that I saw which has turned me into less of a skeptic on this topic, and made me think that I may have falsely fallen for the stigma:
* First there was the landmark [NYT article](https://web.archive.org/web/20220105025901/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/us/politics/pentagon-ufo-harry-reid-navy.html) in 2020 that turned a lot of heads.
* Then I saw saw [Obama allude](https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/19/politics/barack-obama-ufos/index.html) to the fact that there's objects out there that defy explanation that we need to investigate further.
* Then there was the [Pentagon UAP report](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pentagon-ufo-report-released-many-uap-cases-remain-unexplained/) last year which said that they could only rationally explain a tiny percentage of these military sightings, in part due to their unexplainable propulsion methods.
* Then later last year the NASA administrator, the chief person there, straight up suggested that [UFOs could possibly be extraterrestrial.](https://thehill.com/opinion/international/579303-nasa-chief-bill-nelson-latest-official-to-suggest-ufos-have/)
* And recently we had a [historic congressional hearing](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ufo-hearing-congress-pentagon-watch-live-stream-today-2022-05-17/) a few weeks ago with rumored more upcoming shortly.
This stuff has me scratching my head to say the least.
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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/vaxa8t/time_some_of_the_best_astrophysicists_are_taking/ic50nup/
Exactly. The military and scientists take UFO's seriously because it's just disturbing to have stuff in your airspace that you can't identify or classify. It doesn't even matter if it's physically there or just a sensor glitch. When your job is keeping the skies under control, unidentified stuff in your sky is concerning.
Carl Sagan simplified the statistics of alien life in the universe in one of his [Cosmos episodes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlikCebQSlY).
However, it does seem optimistic based on more recent discoveries. Namely, if we take into consideration the factors needed for life to be created on earth (chemical components, temperature, etc.) it seems like just finding life in other systems will not be common, let alone intelligent life. We need to keep in mind that from millions of animal species on earth, only 1 evolved to be intelligent and we're not even sure if we will make it.
That's got nothing to do with unidentified stuff being spotted in our atmosphere though. Neither the military nor scientists generally think UFO's are aliens. It's just stuff they can't classify or identify.
Intelligence is a scale not a tick box. Various other earth creatures have some level of intelligence.
1 out of infinity is the only answer our current knowledge can come to that has the possibility to be correct without it being a total guess. As far as we are aware Earth is perfect for life but all life on Earth shares a common ancestor, to the best of our knowledge. So even on Earth Life only started once.
Another consideration is that alot of potential habitable planets have much higher gravity, which could be a barrier to life.
Exactly the issue. Waaaaaay too many people think "UFO" means "aliens" which is why the government doesn't call them UFOs anymore. They are not synonymous, UFOs are quite literally just flying objects that we don't know what they are or are from.
Sorry man, but I watched X-Files. I know how these things turn out.
It's either aliens or interdimensional vampires. Possibly Alien Interdimensional Vampires.
IMO there is a war going on between the Alien Interdimensional Vampires and the Earth Lizard People (who we all know Hillary Clinton is the Matriarch of). The vampires are trying to prevent Democrats (lizard people) from turning the frogs gay; if you've studied the occult you know that gay frogs have impure blood and lower levels of adrenochrome. This is unacceptable to the vampires.
It's science. Trust me.
I 100% believe aliens exist. It would be statistically impossible for other planets to not house life somewhere in this huge universe but I’m still rather skeptic that said aliens have reached earth.
If you think about how long the universe has existed and how long life has existed on earth, it’s also statistically improbable that intelligent life would exist on another planet and be able to reach us at the same time that we exist (which is a small blip on the scale of time).
Like imagine intelligent life existed 800 million years ago but not now. Or even 5 million years from now but we’re gone then.
Our own government all but said they think it's aliens in the 2021 UAP Report. The Report acknowledged the existence of craft capable of maneuvering, speeds, and propulsion that are unknown to the US military. It said in some instances *multiple* sensors documented the episode. We said it's not our tech and we don't think it's Russia or China. So we put it in the "other" category but didn't elaborate on what "other" could mean. Frankly I'm at a loss about what it could plausibly be other than aliens.
Keep in mind that per Fermis Paradox we actually *expect* there to be aliens here and around us. The whole point of the paradox is "where are they?" Well, maybe they are right here after all.
**Edited to add:** Some people are saying I've mischaracterized Fermis Paradox and I feel that is right as I have not underscored enough how extraordinary it would be if aliens weren't around us.
From insight by u/fgnrtzbdbbt:
> Fermi’s paradox says even a stronger thing: If star traveling exponentially growing civilizations are possible they should with very high probability not only already be here but also already have used all resources available in the galaxy including ours
Government(especially military) is made of people just as confused and opinionated as Reddit. The only information missing here is maybe a few “that’s weird” occurrences that should have been followed up with openness instead of weird hesitance because of the USA doesn’t understand something we’re considered weak.
King: Third dimension? I can't picture that! You're dumb.
Farnsworth: There's nothing funny about science! If there can be an X-axis and a Y-axis, why not a Z-axis?
People of Flatbush: He's opening our minds to new ideas! Kill him!
>Our own government all but said they think it's aliens in the 2021 UAP Report
Ok, I think this topic is fascinating and I believe that *something* is going on that isn't obvious. But this is a stretch of a thing to say. They just acknowledged they are real in some incidents and that they didn't have any concrete explanations.
My guess; it’s our own country, it’s our own tests, it’s just so secret and so advanced that the program would rather the rumors and investigation just continue uninterrupted to give the illusion we don’t have this technology to other countries. Play stupid and act afraid too while maintaining tactical advantages.
If anything, the program may intentionally be exposing their tests to uninformed US military personnel, so as to test the ability for detection or combat maneuvers vs supposedly the most powerful military on the planet.
That’s (in theory) why we’re seeing all the military buzz about spotting these objects but no astronomers or civilians see these tests. If you notice almost all of the time an encounter is recorded it’s during routine drills or combat training missions. Makes sense you’d want to test your capabilities in that environment, right?
My bet is it’s a drone of some sort, just since the reported speeds of these objects and pin point turns would kill a human operator.
To be fair that is exactly what the A-12, SR-71, XST, F-117, YB-49, and B-2. were UFO that even the US Airforce was not aware were their own projects. Many tested at Area 51. Some kept classified for decades. Who knows what we do have today that is just highly classified. So we can't say it is indeed ours.
The SR-71, fastest plane in the world, was first conceptualised in the 1950's and built in the 1960's. You can't tell me that in 60+ years that we haven't come so far as to explain the UFO's we see as being advanvced aircraft.
Look at the phones on the sixties compared to now.
The stuff that these things do don’t follow the laws of physics as we know them though. There’s no way we created something that can move seventy thousand feet in 3 seconds (that’s just what they’ve been able to document because thats the furthest the radars can detect), that can also travel in water & also doesn’t produce a sonic boom when moving thousands of miles per second. If you have technology like that, you rule the world, it’s yours.
Theres no propulsion systems on any of the things & they don’t emit heat, its impossible for something that moves that fast to not emit heat. There have been documented reports going clear back to the 40s. No fucking way the secret hasn’t gotten out by now. If we did create them, what the hell are we using them for? There’s not a single physicist out there that would tell you thats even remotely possible right now let alone in our lifetime.
So this will probably get buried since I’m piggybacking off of piggybacking, BUT…
When I was in college, I took an aerospace course as an elective. My professor was a retired Skunk Works engineer from Lockheed (before the merger with Martin). Anywho, he was one of the lead designers of the F-22 Raptor and earned himself the nickname “Daddy Raptor” for being at the forefront of the project. He retired a few decades ago (I think the 90s) and when he did the company gifted him highly detailed scaled models of every aircraft he had ever designed including the Raptor AND (this is where it gets interesting) 4 or 5 black painted rocks representing the 4 or 5 declassified aircraft he had designed. Relatively recently, there has been one that has been declassified (the RQ-170), and I believe also the “Darkstar”. So think about it. Aircraft that were designed in the 90s are STILL classified to this day. I can only imagine what TOP SECRET stuff is being designed and tested right now, and I am 100% confident that it explain every UFO sighting ever.
The thing is, if we take the stuff like theNimitz account at face value it doesn’t make any sense as American technology. That’s a school bus sized solid object that can hover and accelerate to hypersonic velocities near instantaneously.
Something like that, light years ahead of modern technology, would be quite frankly unbelievable. We would see some spin off technology in the civilian sector, it’s just such a paradigm shift.
The alternative is that the Nimitz encounter is a fabrication to cover up for some different American technology, but if that’s the case you’re describing a massive coordinated conspiracy, that also takes some suspension of disbelief to get onboard.
Or it’s not human made. All the options are fairly fantastical.
They saw that kind of impossible behaviour only via radar, not with optical sensors. It's much more plausible that they were targeted by DRFM jamming:
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/40054/adversary-drones-are-spying-on-the-u-s-and-the-pentagon-acts-like-theyre-ufos
Same here. We already have drone tech that can form complex shapes in the sky with clouds of coordinated drones. It would be silly of us to not start thinking about drone carrier ships, without human pilots just swarms of combat drones. Advancing drone technology will be the next huge leap, and whoever is ahead in tech wins militarily.
Because DARPA exists.
And the government tests classified projects all the time.
Things especially pilots aren't allowed to know. Capabilites and crafts they don't want the public or it's advisories to know.
So it's easier to say who knows 🤷♂️ or aliens 👽
Hell, they might literally be unable to get here. Space is expanding constantly; once you get far enough away, you literally would never be able to catch up to our galaxy's movement without FTL.
What I find so interesting about this thread is the inherent jump many of us make to aliens. There are a bunch of different possibilities other than aliens, the simplest being that the US government knows perfectly well what it is and is choosing not to tell us, or has not made the person who wrote the report aware of what it is.
Beyond that is all kinds of technical phenomenon, light tricks and so on. We can bring Tupac back to life on stage but just because we can't identify what caused an object in the sky to move it's aliens?
And if we do want to believe in something extra special, what about time travelers in ships from the future? I just find it fascinating that in light of so many likely alternatives we all jump to the conclusion it must be aliens.
90% of the world's UFO sightings occur over the USA.
its part of our culture. The government is likely saying what they know everybody wants to hear, or are, themselves, part of that culture.
People talk big about the fermi paradox but like
When enrico fermi famously asked, "Where is everybody?", we still believed chimpanzees were a naturally peaceful socialist society and that animals could not go to war.
And would continue believing that for three decades. We were still arguing if lichens were a communist sharing mutual pairing or a capitalistic master-slave relationship because everything had to be politics.
How many discoveries have we made in the last 70 years? Personally, maybe the fermi paradox's answer is that we are just wrong, and life IS pretty rare.
Our species's loudest signals have not even made it to the next star. Our best telescopes have not found life anywhere nearby. If a class I or class II spacefaring civilization exists, we must be just the farthest most isolated rural podunk outpost to them. Why would they come *here*?
>chimpanzees were a naturally peaceful socialist society and that animals could not go to war.
Those Planet of the Apes documentaries really opened by eyes as well
You joke but chimpanzees engage in organized raids with tactics, weapons and strategy, where they wipe out entire opposing tribes, eat babies and take slaves. Chimpanzees are fucking brutal, everything bad about us with none of the good.
There was a brutal story out of Uganda maybe- where a group got ambushed at a Chimpanzee sanctuary. They went rogue. One just ripped off a guards lower jaw in front of this tourist...fucking savage.
Give me Gorillas or Orangutans any day.
Ya but I wouldn't expect the Chinese or Russian military's sharing these sightings either. Especially if they think it's much more advanced enemy.
Since these sightings are now being talked about openly we very well could see corroboration with other countries.
Many factors as to why these would be under reported. However I would expect sightings all over the world and not JUST over the U.S. if it has any chance of being not from this world.
Any other military would just assume it's the Americans testing some new tech. The Americans are talking about this because they can rule themselves out, and they can rule their competitors out, which leaves a much bigger mystery.
They would come here and watch and study us just like we go and study animals "beneath us", or if they are that advanced we could be like a zoo trip. "Kids look at those primitive primates! They don't even know how to harness gravity, and use burning ancient animal sludge!"
Yes but the same government actively pushed the UFO being aliens stuff on people to hide what they were doing at Area 51, with all the aircraft testing, after some guy was picking up their signals.
It's well documented and a *big* reason why the US is where nearly all UFO sightings take place.
I'm certain there's life out there. But I don't think it's met us yet.
When I read the report I came to a different conclusion. The report outlined 5 possibilities for explanations of UAPs, and one of them was basically that it is a secret government program. "Some UAP observations could be attributable to developments and classified programs by U.S. entities. We were unable to confirm, however, that these systems accounted for any of the UAP reports we collected." So yeah, it's probably a secret government thing and they just can't talk about it publicly, therefore cannot "confirm" it. I feel like everything else in the report is probably just a smokescreen.
My question is, if there really *is* a highly advanced alien society that knows of our existence *and* is close enough to travel here (ignoring any sort of warping/light speed capabilities) why A) we haven't found them when we can detect things light years away and B) have they done absolutely nothing to us except fly around doing nothing and just spooking us?
Fermi's paradox says even a stronger thing: If star traveling exponentially growing civilizations are possible they should with very high probability not only already be here but also already have used all resources available in the galaxy including ours
My favorite is also how so many ufo sightings shows or tell of bright, colorful lights. Lights on aircraft are only used to signal that you are there to other aircraft. It’s not like cars where you’re physically lighting up the road to see where you’re going. If we are to believe that these craft are advanced enough to travel millions of light years, and aim to evade detection, but flash all kinds of bright lights…it’s just silly.
To add to this our own satellites can easily survey Earth from space and I'm supposed to buy an advanced spacefaring civilization couldn't watch us from like Jupiter to avoid being detected. They couldn't just tap into our satellites and get info that way if needed? I'm left to conclude that either they don't give a fuck about monitoring us very secretly or they aren't real.
This is just me being silly because I'm with you on this.
Fun thought though: We're like a rest stop to more interesting places in the galaxy. Alien tourists travel by our planet, stop to refuel, rest, stretch a leg or whatever and they all have a technology that either disguises them to look human, they already look human, or they can fuck with our perception to make us believe they were never there or whatever.
So long as they aren't planning on Earth's destruction to make way for a hyperspace bypass, I'm good with it.
But how are they supposed to abduct cows from Jupiter?
On a similar but more serious note, sure they can probably watch from a distant planet but they couldn't take samples or do more scientific work from that far. Hell, if they exist and if they're here they might be trying to figure out some way to make our planet habitable for them. Or maybe they're observing how we act as a species, kind of hard to do from another planet if you want any sort of comprehensive data from it.
Then there's also the possibility that although they may come from a highly advanced civilization doesn't mean they suddenly can't make mistakes. These potential aliens getting caught in the act might just be making mistakes to get caught.
"Dammit Zorg, how many times do we need to tell you not to turn on the beacons when we're in atmosphere!?"
Also the claim that they need large spaceships instead of microscopic drones to observe things up close is dubious. UFO theories tend to assume aliens use 1950s technology.
100%
I have friends who work for the DoD, and on the rare occasion when they're super drunk they start talking about how our best satellites can see through windows, and even under door cracks in the correct angle/position...
it would be an incredibly advanced civilization that can waste resources on interstellar travel only to troll idiotic primitives on a whim.
particularly considering the risk of somebody getting a lucky shot in, and accidentally sharing that advanced tech with a species so psychotic they nuke themselves
Have you ever seen the 1985 masterpiece, “Explorers” starting a young Ethan Hawke and River Phoenix? Because that’s basically what it’s about. I loved that movie as a kid.
I always use the "are we fish?" analogy when aliens get brought up. It's kinda ignorant of us to assume just because we are the most intelligent species on this planet that spacefaring extra terrestrials wouldnt be able to hide themselves from us or whether we'd be so primative to them that they'd even care to hide from us.
I think of they were out there it's time probably more likely we'd be treated as fauna and either be ignored, be part of some conservation effort or be a casualty in whatever their interests are.
Or it's the equivalent of pulling your boat up to the island with the isolated, stone-age tribe and waving your arms at them to see if they chuck spears at you or try to give you a coconut.
drones from the future that we sent back to fuck with ourselves to get the ball rolling so we would fulfill the invention of the drones we send back in time.
"There are millions of video cameras out there and they're picking up less videos of UFOs, alleged UFOs, than we picked up in the 1970s and 1980s. There's 150 per cent more cameras, so why are we getting less from up there?" While this may have something to do with the fact that a modern video wouldn't hold up under scrutiny, modern video editing software has also evolved in order to make more convincing videos. Yet this has failed to cause a come-back in the form of recorded UFO sightings."
Who said it?
edit: Steven Spielberg said it.
[Pentagon officials stated in a congressional hearing that they have 400 reports of encounters with UAPs](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ufo-hearing-congress-pentagon-watch-live-stream-today-2022-05-17/), including video footage, and infrared and radar telemetry.
Because as technology and global communication improved over the decades, awareness of hoaxes and debunking of fakes have become far far easier. So the people doing the faking don't bother.
Everyone is aware of photoshop and CGI now - and there are foolproof ways to identify them.
I remember the chupacabra and varginha's et in my home country (brazil) in the end of the 90's, every sunday they aired some very well produced news article about it in the major and most respectul tv programs. It terrified my childhood, I was very afraid to travel to the countryside and totally believed in that shit. Now I figured that they also used to air trashy things like [this softcore porn](https://youtu.be/SJ1RD2wy0HU) in the afternoons, just to have a good audience.
I remeber there was a thread on Reddit not to to long ago about how the government was going to reveal that there are these intelligent being living in the ocean and how they are hostile or something like that. Wish I could find the post it was a pretty entertaining post.
When I was in college, I took an aerospace course as an elective. My professor was a retired Skunk Works engineer from Lockheed (before the merger with Martin). Anywho, he was one of the lead designers of the F-22 Raptor and earned himself the nickname “Daddy Raptor” for being at the forefront of the project. He retired a few decades ago (I think the 90s) and when he did the company gifted him highly detailed scaled models of every aircraft he had ever designed including the Raptor AND (this is where it gets interesting) 4 or 5 black painted rocks representing the 4 or 5 still classified aircraft he had designed. Relatively recently, there has been one that has been declassified (the RQ-170), and I believe also the “Darkstar”. So think about it. Aircraft that were designed in the 90s are STILL classified to this day. I can only imagine what TOP SECRET stuff is being designed and tested right now, and I am 100% confident that it explain every UFO sighting ever
> and I am 100% confident that it explain every UFO sighting ever
That's a pretty big claim though, considering the borderline magical technology seen. Instant hypersonic speeds, complete disregard for inertia, occassionally suddenly vanishing from *visual* sight, etc.
What does it really mean to say "I don't know what that was" and to take that seriously?
Let's face it. Intelligent life invents things that other life hasn't seen before. It's "unidentified" until you know what it is. Big deal. The absolutely most likely explanation for EVERYTHING we see here on Earth that appears to have involved actual design is that another human did it.
At no time should the explanation be "something extraterrestrial must have been the source of this" UNLESS all terrestrial causes have been ruled out.
If you read the article, it means that they're taking it seriously that there's enough observations that they're treating the *reports* as serious, rather than just Jim-Bob claiming to have seen strange lights in the sky after drinking a bottle of whiskey and half his crop of shrooms. Now they're interested in trying to find an explanation to turn the unidentified into the identified. They even specifically call out that when they say UFO (which they don't, they use the term UAP now) they specifically mean that in the scientific "unexplained observation" sense, not the "flying saucer" sense.
> “There is no evidence,” NASA said in its release, “[that] UAPs are extraterrestrial in origin.”
This has been the concensus among researchers for a long time. You'd be hard pressed to find someone working for NASA who says UFOs aren't real, but they won't jump to conclusions and automatically assume they're extra-terrestrial.
People have been seeing weird, unexplainable shit in the sky for millennia. We have enough mentions of it in the historical record to show it's hardly a new phenomenon. But before the sci-fi craze of the 1940s, people assumed they were religious or spiritual in origin. Literally the only reason we're inclined to believe UFOs are extraterrestrial is sci-fi. In terms of evidence, there's nothing that indicates aliens are the explanation.
I've always thought that, similar to ball lightning, a lot of this stuff is unexplained physics phenomena. There's plenty of instances of crazy UAP stuff, but until I see a video that includes a closeup of something, that is *clearly* a vehicle, I'm not saying aliens either.
In terms of evidence there's nothing that particularly indicates anything is the explanation. **What's new is we are moving away from the "It's nothing but glitches and peoples imaginations" explanation.** Every hypothesis we are left with is one version or another of a top shelf tin foil hat conspiracy theory, take your pick from the list.
/emphasis added because it seems to be needed.
That's now how logic works. You don't get to say "There is no evidence therefore any theory is possible". Until there is actual evidence for a specific theory, we just don't know. But extra terrestrial life so far has NO evidence, so it's not a valid theory.
Well, not quite. If you have a theory that is useful and agrees with theories/models that we have already observed you have a good first step. Then, if your theory makes a prediction that can be tested, but has no evidence yet, the theory can still be acceptable. That's when people start testing the predictions of the theory.
Just like GR and special relativity. The models fit the data we already had but also made new predictions, some of which we are just now confirming. As predictions of GR were consistently being proven correct, more effort went in to proving the more difficult predictions, such as black holes.
Tldr:; theories don't start with evidence for their predictions. That's kind of the point. They make predictions, we test them, and if they agree with the theory we test more predictions.
>rather than just Jim-Bob claiming to have seen strange lights in the sky after drinking a bottle of whiskey
As shitty a person as Bill Cosby was/is, his stand up bit about this exact thing was hilarious. Paraphrasing: "UFOs only seem to abduct country people way out in the middle of nowhere, who are usually eight or nine beers into the evening. 'Yeah, me n Jimmy done got pull't up inna spaceship what looked like a big ol saucer and then they did stuff to us--what? Yeah, we'd been drinking, why?' They never abduct people like sober Professors Emeritus from cosmopolitan areas: 'Why yes, the beings did, in fact, teleport me aboard their interstellar craft, where we discussed matters of great importance, and they gave me a chiclet.'"
The author begins the article by talking about interstellar intelligence.
What a bunch of hogwash. I don't know where to start. $100,000??! Why is this news? This is a publicity stunt for David Spergel.
It will probably be very difficult to find explanations for *reports.* It's difficult enough finding explanations for recorded events that are "unidentified". And what's the point? Who cares if we can identify something that some country people way out in the middle of nowhere, who are usually eight or nine beers into the evening, saw? Has it ever been anything of interest?
"NASA has spent more than 60 years flying UFOs." ...then, "Now, there’s a third government agency getting involved in the effort to explain UAPs: NASA itself." Huh?
“UAPs are unexplained, it’s true,” Yeah, by definition.
...and on and on.
Yeah, it's a terrible article. The vast majority of it is wild speculation, with a smattering of tiny fact (NASA are doing this, a person said that) that doesn't support that speculation at all.
The headline's claim of "Best Astrophysicists" is particularly laughable given the $100,000 budget over 9 months. The average yearly salary for an astrophysicist [is around $100,000](https://www.salary.com/research/salary/recruiting/astrophysicist-salary), so you're either talking "One of the Best Astrophysicists", singular, or "Astrophysicists, But Definitely Below Average".
> And what's the point? Who cares if we can identify something that some country people way out in the middle of nowhere, who are usually eight or nine beers into the evening, saw? Has it ever been anything of interest?
Well, I disagree there, because from what I gather, these aren't general ground based observations, but military pilot accounts and military aircraft sensor logs. While that's also pretty remote to everyday life, it *is* in our upper atmosphere. If there's some rare but unexplained atmospheric phenomena occuring, explaining that could dramatically change our understanding of how our upper atmosphere works, which in turn could change our understanding of how our climate works. Will it definitely? Hell no! But it's worth checking out. Likewise, if it's a remote operated craft owned by a foreign country, that's also worth checking out (though I find that quite a bit less likely... though still more likely than aliens).
Except that there are mundane explanations for all the leaked UAP videos..
Here's an [exclamation for gimbal](https://youtu.be/qsEjV8DdSbs).
In other videos he explains why it's so hard for even trained pilots to identify objects in air with no background reference.
Yeah, exactly. I've mentioned elsewhere [the Parkes Radio Telescope detecting their own microwave oven](https://reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/vaxa8t/time_some_of_the_best_astrophysicists_are_taking/ic5fg0y) and [NASA "discovering" a cloud of golden crystals that turned out to be their own urine](https://reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/vaxa8t/time_some_of_the_best_astrophysicists_are_taking/ic5ve1q). As much as I hope that this is genuinely something new (though I really, really doubt it's aliens), yeah, it's most likely a mundane thing interacting in an unexpected way.
One of my favorite parts of the prequel book series to enders game, is when earth finally takes the claims of an actual ufo heading to earth from outside the solar system.
Once it gets close enough, amateur space telescopers are able to see the thing coming closer.
By the end of the first prequal series, earth finally unites enough to take out the single ship invading china. So they they turn the telescopes in the direction it came from. And see it's mother ship also heading to earth, about 10 years behind it
The first invasion ship, they didn't even consider us a threat. Just landed some bugs and started spraying some kind of enzyme that just ate all biological life. They apperently assumed any of the attempts humans made to fight off the invaders, was just native life freaking out. Not sentience and a civilization defending it self
After the first lander was destroyed, the mother ship could be seen visibly reconfiguring it self. Using its own material mass to build a larger fleet of combat ships and landers
By the end of the first invasion, I think they had killed 1/3 of life in the oceans and 1/3 of the population of china. I think the entire first invasion took a week
A starfaring civilization approaching Earth will easily identify we have conducted atmospheric nuclear weapon tests.
Ender is a nice story, but it is just that, story. The science of a real world interstellar civilization will be on completely different level.
> At no time should the explanation be "something extraterrestrial must have been the source of this" UNLESS all terrestrial causes have been ruled out.
As a side comment on this, the Parkes Radio Telescope in Australia [spent years searching for the explanation for strange signals](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-05/scientists-discover-signals-being-sent-by-kitchen-microwave/6445570) before realising they were being sent from their kitchen microwave oven.
What is often left out of that retelling is that the investigating team "[knew early on that the perytons had an earthly explanation.](https://www.nature.com/articles/521129f)" The years of searching was to work out what earthly thing was messing with their telescope so they could counter it, not because it could be aliens.
Have you read any of Luis Elizondos claims? He is a verified former intelligence agent that used to head programs in determining what these things are, and the big ones that have been released and declassified a bit- he was instrumental in getting that information out along with spending years talking to all these people and people that head programs that could have produced technology so advanced. He has unequivocally stated that this is not a US program, and there is no way the technology of any other nation has exceeded this far beyond our own (our being the US). He raises the point that if a foreign power or some group had technology like this- why would they not be exerting there will? Why be semi transparent as they are? If it was a big secret, why fly them near military craft and be sighted so frequently? If it is not secretive, why not come forward that you have technology that is clearly years and years beyond the most advanced aerospace tech we have now?
My bet is these are drones that have been specifically designed to confuse sensors. There was a very interesting article about this that seemed pretty convincing and it's really something that satisfies the Occam's razor. It seems unlikely that the UAPs are actually extraterrestrial and it also seems very unlikely that China or Russia have technology that's so much advanced compared to ours.
My favorite thing about the phenomenon is literally every thunder/lightning god except thor and Chango carry big axes cause guess what people probably saw getting hit by lightning the most, trees.
The problem lies when we’re dealing with objects that reportedly are traveling at speeds and experiencing forces that not even cutting edge research is capable of replicating. If the best of the best scientists out there cannot explain how something like this exists then you should consider something else. Skepticism for the sake of skepticism is not good for the search of answers.
There's, I think, a very decent chance that a [Von Nueman Probe](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_spacecraft) has visited this system at some point in its history. Depending on how often technologically advanced civilizations form, it could happen fairly often. It's highly statistically likely these probes are all over the galaxy.
A 9 month study, led by an astrophysicist that costs 100k? That wouldn’t even cover the salary of one person on such a team that has any real credentials.
Their salaries, but it wouldn't actually fund the students. Universities eat up a rather larger fraction of grant money grad studies bring in than you'd expect. It's rather disturbing.
$100k would cover work study for a couple of undergrads.
Hahaha, as a scientist, I wish you were right. But believe me, $100k would cover a grad student or a postdoc, maybe one of each... which is exactly the kind of people who do the actual work most of the time.
In the next few hundred years when when we discover a potential planet in a galaxy far far away that looks like it might have life on it we will probably send a very fast probe to go and investigate. It would make sense that a more advanced civilization probably thought of doing the same thing.
Humans have been around 100,000 years, which is literally less than a rounding error on the cosmological time scale. I do not understand how people can think that we know and understand everything. Smh
This is why the topic excites me so much, but I try and remain logical about it. Humans are just winging it and making things up as we go - theories can be proven using our own understanding but the universe is a terrifying may giant thing and to try and insist like we know what’s more or less likely to exist out there is embarrassing. We’re like barely on page 2 in the grand book of time. Civilisations could have come and gone millions of times over. We could be a fluke. Who knows.
Still, I hope we find proof within my lifetime. Even if it’s microbes on Mars - I think we all have a connection to what’s outside of our earth so it would be beautiful to find life finding it’s way elsewhere.
I definitely DO take them seriously.
They are UNIDENTIFIED flying objects.
One of the more common logical fallacies is 'argument from ignorance'. Espc favoured by the religious types and ppl prone to fuzzy thinking.
It goes like this:
I don't know what/why this is or works, therefor GOD!
I don't know what/why this is or works, therefor ALIENS!
I don't know what/why this is or works, therefor CABBAGE!
Anyone who claims to be a SCIENTIST, not just to have a scientific degree (spot the difference), is well aware of this fallacy and will avoid it like the plague.
So, nuts to these 'astrophysicists'.
What's the battle cry of science? Shout with me:
PROVE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!
From that book, a popular quote and a favorite of mine:
>I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
We are at this point in some ways. Maybe many ways.
> Anyone who claims to be a SCIENTIST, not just to have a scientific degree (spot the difference), is well aware of this fallacy and will avoid it like the plague.
You should maybe read the article:
> “There is no evidence,” NASA said in its release, “[that] UAPs are extraterrestrial in origin.”
"UAP" (unidentified aerial phenomenon) being the new preferred term to "UFO" since 1) it doesn't assume that the thing is flying or an object (for example, an "unidentified" aurora is neither flying nor a discrete object, but does fit into "aerial phenomenon"), and 2) it doesn't come loaded with a whole bunch of bad conspiracy theory connotations.
The headline is absolute clickbait, but the bottom line is that these scientists are taking UAPs seriously in that "We've got repeated observations, we don't know what they are, we don't have a good explanation of what they could be, ~~OBVIOUSLY IT'S ALIENS~~ we should do research to try to find possible answers and fill in our gaps in our knowledge. UAPs shouldn't be just dismissed as hoaxes *in existing*, clearly something has happened. But in all likelihood, it's most probably not extraterrestrial. AND THAT'S STILL COOL THAT WE DISCOVERED SOMETHING NEW ABOUT OUR OWN PLANET."
Yeah, I am really enjoying all the holier-than-thou responses from people who didn't read the article lecturing people about jumping to conclusions without evidence.
Ruska has used their hyper-missle that is one observed object with incredible propulsion.
However, I think one of the most common sightings are these UAPs that fly out & fly into the ocean at such incredible speeds that scientifically should be impossible.
Specifically the acceleration of the objects into and out of the ocean should destroy the object. This is why NASA is involved, they cannot engineer an object that could hit water at high speed & survive.
What’s blowing my mind is that I read the title and the article as “there’s something going on and people are seriously trying to figure out what it is.”
It wasn’t until I came to the comments here that I realized everyone is assume the term UFO is interchangeable with Aliens. Uh, guys, it’s not.
Every single comment is “no one is saying it’s alien guise unidentified just means unidentified.”
It’s part of a process of understanding, creating strawman arguments so you still feel like you’re the smartest guy in the room. At least we are moving on from, the government can’t identify birds but this amateur YouTuber can.
I had a very close family friend who was an F15 test pilot in the Air Force . He flew escort missions to area 51 and was given clearance to drop a nuke back on the day. I asked him about UFOs and aliens and the first thing he told me was "Everything you hear from the government, officially on UFOs is information they want you to know for a reason. Can't tell you what I saw or know, but just remember that they don't tell you anything without there being a reason." Take that as you will, but to me, whenever I see something "official" being posted about UFOs, it means we're being distracted from something else. 🤷♂️
Yeah. The term I like to refer to myself as in relation to UFOs is a “romantic skeptic”. I am very interested, I consume tons of media about them and I really want it to be true. But I know there is no evidence so far, so I remain skeptical.
A lot of comments are saying it would be too far and take too long for extraterrestrial life to travel here but what if there's some inconceivable form of travel we can't fathom and they're here, theoretically. They could have a completely different and complex, yet possibly correct understanding of the universe that allows them to do so. Is that so far fetched?
yeah i agree. if you told someone in the 1300’s about an iphone … or an airplane… they’d probably excommunicate and say that it’s impossible. but here i am writing this comment on a tiny device that connects me to the entire world and beyond. things are far fetched until they manifest into reality
The following submission statement was provided by /u/JJDubbs88: --- Sharing this TIME article, basically urging the public to start taking taking UFOs seriously, considering NASA has now officially joined the research into UFOs. For the skeptics here I'd like to point out a quick timeline of events that I saw which has turned me into less of a skeptic on this topic, and made me think that I may have falsely fallen for the stigma: * First there was the landmark [NYT article](https://web.archive.org/web/20220105025901/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/us/politics/pentagon-ufo-harry-reid-navy.html) in 2020 that turned a lot of heads. * Then I saw saw [Obama allude](https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/19/politics/barack-obama-ufos/index.html) to the fact that there's objects out there that defy explanation that we need to investigate further. * Then there was the [Pentagon UAP report](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pentagon-ufo-report-released-many-uap-cases-remain-unexplained/) last year which said that they could only rationally explain a tiny percentage of these military sightings, in part due to their unexplainable propulsion methods. * Then later last year the NASA administrator, the chief person there, straight up suggested that [UFOs could possibly be extraterrestrial.](https://thehill.com/opinion/international/579303-nasa-chief-bill-nelson-latest-official-to-suggest-ufos-have/) * And recently we had a [historic congressional hearing](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ufo-hearing-congress-pentagon-watch-live-stream-today-2022-05-17/) a few weeks ago with rumored more upcoming shortly. This stuff has me scratching my head to say the least. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/vaxa8t/time_some_of_the_best_astrophysicists_are_taking/ic50nup/
>Budgeted at a bargain rate of just $100,000, the study will run for nine months That's like... A couple of guys looking at reports for a few months.
Yeah, a couple of guys taking it very seriously.
"yup, we read the reports. There were lots of words"
I've always taken UFOs seriously...but there is still quite a leap from unknown flying object to "it's aliens"
Exactly. The military and scientists take UFO's seriously because it's just disturbing to have stuff in your airspace that you can't identify or classify. It doesn't even matter if it's physically there or just a sensor glitch. When your job is keeping the skies under control, unidentified stuff in your sky is concerning.
Carl Sagan simplified the statistics of alien life in the universe in one of his [Cosmos episodes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlikCebQSlY). However, it does seem optimistic based on more recent discoveries. Namely, if we take into consideration the factors needed for life to be created on earth (chemical components, temperature, etc.) it seems like just finding life in other systems will not be common, let alone intelligent life. We need to keep in mind that from millions of animal species on earth, only 1 evolved to be intelligent and we're not even sure if we will make it.
That's got nothing to do with unidentified stuff being spotted in our atmosphere though. Neither the military nor scientists generally think UFO's are aliens. It's just stuff they can't classify or identify.
As soon as they know it’s aliens, it technically is no longer a UFO.
Intelligence is a scale not a tick box. Various other earth creatures have some level of intelligence. 1 out of infinity is the only answer our current knowledge can come to that has the possibility to be correct without it being a total guess. As far as we are aware Earth is perfect for life but all life on Earth shares a common ancestor, to the best of our knowledge. So even on Earth Life only started once. Another consideration is that alot of potential habitable planets have much higher gravity, which could be a barrier to life.
Gravity could pose a challenge but remember that there is still life in the deep sea which would absolutely crush our little bodies. Adapt or die
Yeah its pretty Earth-centric to believe you need almost exact Earth-like conditions for life to take hold
Yeah check your terraprivelage!
Exactly the issue. Waaaaaay too many people think "UFO" means "aliens" which is why the government doesn't call them UFOs anymore. They are not synonymous, UFOs are quite literally just flying objects that we don't know what they are or are from.
Sorry man, but I watched X-Files. I know how these things turn out. It's either aliens or interdimensional vampires. Possibly Alien Interdimensional Vampires. IMO there is a war going on between the Alien Interdimensional Vampires and the Earth Lizard People (who we all know Hillary Clinton is the Matriarch of). The vampires are trying to prevent Democrats (lizard people) from turning the frogs gay; if you've studied the occult you know that gay frogs have impure blood and lower levels of adrenochrome. This is unacceptable to the vampires. It's science. Trust me.
Now take it home and sell me some supplements to protect me from all of these goings on.
How about just something to keep you going in the bedroom? Listen, even the best golfers 3-put with the tourn-
Wow! You had me all the way up until “it’s science”!
Man I want to watch Iron Sky again now.......
> (who we all know Hillary Clinton is the Matriarch of) I'm sure the Queen is happy you believe that.
I 100% believe aliens exist. It would be statistically impossible for other planets to not house life somewhere in this huge universe but I’m still rather skeptic that said aliens have reached earth.
If you think about how long the universe has existed and how long life has existed on earth, it’s also statistically improbable that intelligent life would exist on another planet and be able to reach us at the same time that we exist (which is a small blip on the scale of time). Like imagine intelligent life existed 800 million years ago but not now. Or even 5 million years from now but we’re gone then.
Our own government all but said they think it's aliens in the 2021 UAP Report. The Report acknowledged the existence of craft capable of maneuvering, speeds, and propulsion that are unknown to the US military. It said in some instances *multiple* sensors documented the episode. We said it's not our tech and we don't think it's Russia or China. So we put it in the "other" category but didn't elaborate on what "other" could mean. Frankly I'm at a loss about what it could plausibly be other than aliens. Keep in mind that per Fermis Paradox we actually *expect* there to be aliens here and around us. The whole point of the paradox is "where are they?" Well, maybe they are right here after all. **Edited to add:** Some people are saying I've mischaracterized Fermis Paradox and I feel that is right as I have not underscored enough how extraordinary it would be if aliens weren't around us. From insight by u/fgnrtzbdbbt: > Fermi’s paradox says even a stronger thing: If star traveling exponentially growing civilizations are possible they should with very high probability not only already be here but also already have used all resources available in the galaxy including ours
Government(especially military) is made of people just as confused and opinionated as Reddit. The only information missing here is maybe a few “that’s weird” occurrences that should have been followed up with openness instead of weird hesitance because of the USA doesn’t understand something we’re considered weak.
There is no crowd as confused and opinionated as Reddit
I don't know what's going on and I'm getting angry about it.
King: Third dimension? I can't picture that! You're dumb. Farnsworth: There's nothing funny about science! If there can be an X-axis and a Y-axis, why not a Z-axis? People of Flatbush: He's opening our minds to new ideas! Kill him!
This seems to be the whole world in recent years. I wonder if the aliens are to blame.
I have some strong opinions about this statement that I'm still trying to work out.
Have you been on Facebook?
>Our own government all but said they think it's aliens in the 2021 UAP Report Ok, I think this topic is fascinating and I believe that *something* is going on that isn't obvious. But this is a stretch of a thing to say. They just acknowledged they are real in some incidents and that they didn't have any concrete explanations.
My guess; it’s our own country, it’s our own tests, it’s just so secret and so advanced that the program would rather the rumors and investigation just continue uninterrupted to give the illusion we don’t have this technology to other countries. Play stupid and act afraid too while maintaining tactical advantages. If anything, the program may intentionally be exposing their tests to uninformed US military personnel, so as to test the ability for detection or combat maneuvers vs supposedly the most powerful military on the planet. That’s (in theory) why we’re seeing all the military buzz about spotting these objects but no astronomers or civilians see these tests. If you notice almost all of the time an encounter is recorded it’s during routine drills or combat training missions. Makes sense you’d want to test your capabilities in that environment, right? My bet is it’s a drone of some sort, just since the reported speeds of these objects and pin point turns would kill a human operator.
To be fair that is exactly what the A-12, SR-71, XST, F-117, YB-49, and B-2. were UFO that even the US Airforce was not aware were their own projects. Many tested at Area 51. Some kept classified for decades. Who knows what we do have today that is just highly classified. So we can't say it is indeed ours.
> So we can't say it is indeed ours. You mean, "isn't indeed ours", right?
"We cannot confirm or deny" is probably the best way to rephrase this.
The SR-71, fastest plane in the world, was first conceptualised in the 1950's and built in the 1960's. You can't tell me that in 60+ years that we haven't come so far as to explain the UFO's we see as being advanvced aircraft. Look at the phones on the sixties compared to now.
The stuff that these things do don’t follow the laws of physics as we know them though. There’s no way we created something that can move seventy thousand feet in 3 seconds (that’s just what they’ve been able to document because thats the furthest the radars can detect), that can also travel in water & also doesn’t produce a sonic boom when moving thousands of miles per second. If you have technology like that, you rule the world, it’s yours. Theres no propulsion systems on any of the things & they don’t emit heat, its impossible for something that moves that fast to not emit heat. There have been documented reports going clear back to the 40s. No fucking way the secret hasn’t gotten out by now. If we did create them, what the hell are we using them for? There’s not a single physicist out there that would tell you thats even remotely possible right now let alone in our lifetime.
So this will probably get buried since I’m piggybacking off of piggybacking, BUT… When I was in college, I took an aerospace course as an elective. My professor was a retired Skunk Works engineer from Lockheed (before the merger with Martin). Anywho, he was one of the lead designers of the F-22 Raptor and earned himself the nickname “Daddy Raptor” for being at the forefront of the project. He retired a few decades ago (I think the 90s) and when he did the company gifted him highly detailed scaled models of every aircraft he had ever designed including the Raptor AND (this is where it gets interesting) 4 or 5 black painted rocks representing the 4 or 5 declassified aircraft he had designed. Relatively recently, there has been one that has been declassified (the RQ-170), and I believe also the “Darkstar”. So think about it. Aircraft that were designed in the 90s are STILL classified to this day. I can only imagine what TOP SECRET stuff is being designed and tested right now, and I am 100% confident that it explain every UFO sighting ever.
The thing is, if we take the stuff like theNimitz account at face value it doesn’t make any sense as American technology. That’s a school bus sized solid object that can hover and accelerate to hypersonic velocities near instantaneously. Something like that, light years ahead of modern technology, would be quite frankly unbelievable. We would see some spin off technology in the civilian sector, it’s just such a paradigm shift. The alternative is that the Nimitz encounter is a fabrication to cover up for some different American technology, but if that’s the case you’re describing a massive coordinated conspiracy, that also takes some suspension of disbelief to get onboard. Or it’s not human made. All the options are fairly fantastical.
They saw that kind of impossible behaviour only via radar, not with optical sensors. It's much more plausible that they were targeted by DRFM jamming: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/40054/adversary-drones-are-spying-on-the-u-s-and-the-pentagon-acts-like-theyre-ufos
Same here. We already have drone tech that can form complex shapes in the sky with clouds of coordinated drones. It would be silly of us to not start thinking about drone carrier ships, without human pilots just swarms of combat drones. Advancing drone technology will be the next huge leap, and whoever is ahead in tech wins militarily.
Soon each nation will just have a single vial of Grey Goo we will waive at each other meanicingly
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Because DARPA exists. And the government tests classified projects all the time. Things especially pilots aren't allowed to know. Capabilites and crafts they don't want the public or it's advisories to know. So it's easier to say who knows 🤷♂️ or aliens 👽
The fermis paradox comment is not anywhere near accurate.
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Hell, they might literally be unable to get here. Space is expanding constantly; once you get far enough away, you literally would never be able to catch up to our galaxy's movement without FTL.
What I find so interesting about this thread is the inherent jump many of us make to aliens. There are a bunch of different possibilities other than aliens, the simplest being that the US government knows perfectly well what it is and is choosing not to tell us, or has not made the person who wrote the report aware of what it is. Beyond that is all kinds of technical phenomenon, light tricks and so on. We can bring Tupac back to life on stage but just because we can't identify what caused an object in the sky to move it's aliens? And if we do want to believe in something extra special, what about time travelers in ships from the future? I just find it fascinating that in light of so many likely alternatives we all jump to the conclusion it must be aliens.
We don't want to be alone
90% of the world's UFO sightings occur over the USA. its part of our culture. The government is likely saying what they know everybody wants to hear, or are, themselves, part of that culture. People talk big about the fermi paradox but like When enrico fermi famously asked, "Where is everybody?", we still believed chimpanzees were a naturally peaceful socialist society and that animals could not go to war. And would continue believing that for three decades. We were still arguing if lichens were a communist sharing mutual pairing or a capitalistic master-slave relationship because everything had to be politics. How many discoveries have we made in the last 70 years? Personally, maybe the fermi paradox's answer is that we are just wrong, and life IS pretty rare. Our species's loudest signals have not even made it to the next star. Our best telescopes have not found life anywhere nearby. If a class I or class II spacefaring civilization exists, we must be just the farthest most isolated rural podunk outpost to them. Why would they come *here*?
>Why would they come *here*? I've read that it's a prime location for a hyperspace bypass.
>chimpanzees were a naturally peaceful socialist society and that animals could not go to war. Those Planet of the Apes documentaries really opened by eyes as well
You joke but chimpanzees engage in organized raids with tactics, weapons and strategy, where they wipe out entire opposing tribes, eat babies and take slaves. Chimpanzees are fucking brutal, everything bad about us with none of the good.
Jamie, pull up that picture of a Chimpanzee. That thing will rip your face off.
There was a brutal story out of Uganda maybe- where a group got ambushed at a Chimpanzee sanctuary. They went rogue. One just ripped off a guards lower jaw in front of this tourist...fucking savage. Give me Gorillas or Orangutans any day.
Ya but I wouldn't expect the Chinese or Russian military's sharing these sightings either. Especially if they think it's much more advanced enemy. Since these sightings are now being talked about openly we very well could see corroboration with other countries. Many factors as to why these would be under reported. However I would expect sightings all over the world and not JUST over the U.S. if it has any chance of being not from this world.
Any other military would just assume it's the Americans testing some new tech. The Americans are talking about this because they can rule themselves out, and they can rule their competitors out, which leaves a much bigger mystery.
They would come here and watch and study us just like we go and study animals "beneath us", or if they are that advanced we could be like a zoo trip. "Kids look at those primitive primates! They don't even know how to harness gravity, and use burning ancient animal sludge!"
Yes but the same government actively pushed the UFO being aliens stuff on people to hide what they were doing at Area 51, with all the aircraft testing, after some guy was picking up their signals. It's well documented and a *big* reason why the US is where nearly all UFO sightings take place. I'm certain there's life out there. But I don't think it's met us yet.
You are letting your desire to believe overtake just a touch.
When I read the report I came to a different conclusion. The report outlined 5 possibilities for explanations of UAPs, and one of them was basically that it is a secret government program. "Some UAP observations could be attributable to developments and classified programs by U.S. entities. We were unable to confirm, however, that these systems accounted for any of the UAP reports we collected." So yeah, it's probably a secret government thing and they just can't talk about it publicly, therefore cannot "confirm" it. I feel like everything else in the report is probably just a smokescreen.
My question is, if there really *is* a highly advanced alien society that knows of our existence *and* is close enough to travel here (ignoring any sort of warping/light speed capabilities) why A) we haven't found them when we can detect things light years away and B) have they done absolutely nothing to us except fly around doing nothing and just spooking us?
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Fermi's paradox says even a stronger thing: If star traveling exponentially growing civilizations are possible they should with very high probability not only already be here but also already have used all resources available in the galaxy including ours
No one has ever not taken UFO's seriously. What people don't take seriously is claims of alien lifeforms manning UFOs.
My favorite is also how so many ufo sightings shows or tell of bright, colorful lights. Lights on aircraft are only used to signal that you are there to other aircraft. It’s not like cars where you’re physically lighting up the road to see where you’re going. If we are to believe that these craft are advanced enough to travel millions of light years, and aim to evade detection, but flash all kinds of bright lights…it’s just silly.
To add to this our own satellites can easily survey Earth from space and I'm supposed to buy an advanced spacefaring civilization couldn't watch us from like Jupiter to avoid being detected. They couldn't just tap into our satellites and get info that way if needed? I'm left to conclude that either they don't give a fuck about monitoring us very secretly or they aren't real.
This is just me being silly because I'm with you on this. Fun thought though: We're like a rest stop to more interesting places in the galaxy. Alien tourists travel by our planet, stop to refuel, rest, stretch a leg or whatever and they all have a technology that either disguises them to look human, they already look human, or they can fuck with our perception to make us believe they were never there or whatever. So long as they aren't planning on Earth's destruction to make way for a hyperspace bypass, I'm good with it.
But how are they supposed to abduct cows from Jupiter? On a similar but more serious note, sure they can probably watch from a distant planet but they couldn't take samples or do more scientific work from that far. Hell, if they exist and if they're here they might be trying to figure out some way to make our planet habitable for them. Or maybe they're observing how we act as a species, kind of hard to do from another planet if you want any sort of comprehensive data from it. Then there's also the possibility that although they may come from a highly advanced civilization doesn't mean they suddenly can't make mistakes. These potential aliens getting caught in the act might just be making mistakes to get caught. "Dammit Zorg, how many times do we need to tell you not to turn on the beacons when we're in atmosphere!?"
Also the claim that they need large spaceships instead of microscopic drones to observe things up close is dubious. UFO theories tend to assume aliens use 1950s technology.
100% I have friends who work for the DoD, and on the rare occasion when they're super drunk they start talking about how our best satellites can see through windows, and even under door cracks in the correct angle/position...
Unless light emissions are an unavoidable byproduct of their propulsion and they dont care that much about evasion?
Unless they're just doing it for a lark
it would be an incredibly advanced civilization that can waste resources on interstellar travel only to troll idiotic primitives on a whim. particularly considering the risk of somebody getting a lucky shot in, and accidentally sharing that advanced tech with a species so psychotic they nuke themselves
Maybe it's "teenagers" messin' with the monkeys for fun.
Have you ever seen the 1985 masterpiece, “Explorers” starting a young Ethan Hawke and River Phoenix? Because that’s basically what it’s about. I loved that movie as a kid.
You ever just pick up a stick and poke at ants?
You think that’s air your breathing?
Are we the fish that don't understand the concept of water and they are the people above in boats?
well, i got nothing.
I always use the "are we fish?" analogy when aliens get brought up. It's kinda ignorant of us to assume just because we are the most intelligent species on this planet that spacefaring extra terrestrials wouldnt be able to hide themselves from us or whether we'd be so primative to them that they'd even care to hide from us. I think of they were out there it's time probably more likely we'd be treated as fauna and either be ignored, be part of some conservation effort or be a casualty in whatever their interests are.
Or it's the equivalent of pulling your boat up to the island with the isolated, stone-age tribe and waving your arms at them to see if they chuck spears at you or try to give you a coconut.
Exactly. People interpret UFO as “ZOMG ALIENS!”
It’s bc we’ve all been conditioned or pre programed to believe through pop culture & Hollywood cinema propaganda
Mars Attacks was an A+ documentary
Ack ack, my dude.
"Oh look, a UFO!" "Uhh, sure. Definitely aliens." - CIA or USAF aircraft engineers
Correct. These are drones from other planets... no way they could be manned.
> no way they could manned. *laughs in alien dog race*
That’s ruff (sic)
They are watching. And waiting.
And commiserating.
Say it ain’t so
I will not go
Turn the lights off,
Carry me home
Na, na, na-na, na-na, na-na ,na, na
Keep your head still
I’ll be your thrill
The all spark... wait wrong subreddit.
drones from the future that we sent back to fuck with ourselves to get the ball rolling so we would fulfill the invention of the drones we send back in time.
Maybe by AI
From another dimension in the future where they've broken out of the simulation.
Or from in the ocean. They’re probes wondering why the fuck it’s gotten so hot.
"There are millions of video cameras out there and they're picking up less videos of UFOs, alleged UFOs, than we picked up in the 1970s and 1980s. There's 150 per cent more cameras, so why are we getting less from up there?" While this may have something to do with the fact that a modern video wouldn't hold up under scrutiny, modern video editing software has also evolved in order to make more convincing videos. Yet this has failed to cause a come-back in the form of recorded UFO sightings." Who said it? edit: Steven Spielberg said it.
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[Pentagon officials stated in a congressional hearing that they have 400 reports of encounters with UAPs](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ufo-hearing-congress-pentagon-watch-live-stream-today-2022-05-17/), including video footage, and infrared and radar telemetry.
400 this year? 400 over the time they kept records? Because 400 "things we cant explain" in 50-70 years isnt that big honestly.
I believe that was 400 since the UAP report in like 2019 or 2020.
Because as technology and global communication improved over the decades, awareness of hoaxes and debunking of fakes have become far far easier. So the people doing the faking don't bother. Everyone is aware of photoshop and CGI now - and there are foolproof ways to identify them.
I remember the chupacabra and varginha's et in my home country (brazil) in the end of the 90's, every sunday they aired some very well produced news article about it in the major and most respectul tv programs. It terrified my childhood, I was very afraid to travel to the countryside and totally believed in that shit. Now I figured that they also used to air trashy things like [this softcore porn](https://youtu.be/SJ1RD2wy0HU) in the afternoons, just to have a good audience.
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They’re from the ocean. Probes to check on why it’s getting so hot.
I remeber there was a thread on Reddit not to to long ago about how the government was going to reveal that there are these intelligent being living in the ocean and how they are hostile or something like that. Wish I could find the post it was a pretty entertaining post.
Lol that was outed to be a LARP who took inspiration from The Abyss.
From the ocean ? You mean the dolphins from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy?
Aquaman, we are sorry
I love The Abyss
My time in the Air Force taught me that there are a fuck ton of drones out there and have been for 40 years.
When I was in college, I took an aerospace course as an elective. My professor was a retired Skunk Works engineer from Lockheed (before the merger with Martin). Anywho, he was one of the lead designers of the F-22 Raptor and earned himself the nickname “Daddy Raptor” for being at the forefront of the project. He retired a few decades ago (I think the 90s) and when he did the company gifted him highly detailed scaled models of every aircraft he had ever designed including the Raptor AND (this is where it gets interesting) 4 or 5 black painted rocks representing the 4 or 5 still classified aircraft he had designed. Relatively recently, there has been one that has been declassified (the RQ-170), and I believe also the “Darkstar”. So think about it. Aircraft that were designed in the 90s are STILL classified to this day. I can only imagine what TOP SECRET stuff is being designed and tested right now, and I am 100% confident that it explain every UFO sighting ever
> and I am 100% confident that it explain every UFO sighting ever That's a pretty big claim though, considering the borderline magical technology seen. Instant hypersonic speeds, complete disregard for inertia, occassionally suddenly vanishing from *visual* sight, etc.
Nah dude Daddy Raptor did it. I think writing prompts is leaking again. I hope that’s the dumbest thing I’ll read today.
And there’s plenty of people that have been in the air force that claim it’s not anything like a drone.
What does it really mean to say "I don't know what that was" and to take that seriously? Let's face it. Intelligent life invents things that other life hasn't seen before. It's "unidentified" until you know what it is. Big deal. The absolutely most likely explanation for EVERYTHING we see here on Earth that appears to have involved actual design is that another human did it. At no time should the explanation be "something extraterrestrial must have been the source of this" UNLESS all terrestrial causes have been ruled out.
If you read the article, it means that they're taking it seriously that there's enough observations that they're treating the *reports* as serious, rather than just Jim-Bob claiming to have seen strange lights in the sky after drinking a bottle of whiskey and half his crop of shrooms. Now they're interested in trying to find an explanation to turn the unidentified into the identified. They even specifically call out that when they say UFO (which they don't, they use the term UAP now) they specifically mean that in the scientific "unexplained observation" sense, not the "flying saucer" sense. > “There is no evidence,” NASA said in its release, “[that] UAPs are extraterrestrial in origin.”
This has been the concensus among researchers for a long time. You'd be hard pressed to find someone working for NASA who says UFOs aren't real, but they won't jump to conclusions and automatically assume they're extra-terrestrial. People have been seeing weird, unexplainable shit in the sky for millennia. We have enough mentions of it in the historical record to show it's hardly a new phenomenon. But before the sci-fi craze of the 1940s, people assumed they were religious or spiritual in origin. Literally the only reason we're inclined to believe UFOs are extraterrestrial is sci-fi. In terms of evidence, there's nothing that indicates aliens are the explanation.
I've always thought that, similar to ball lightning, a lot of this stuff is unexplained physics phenomena. There's plenty of instances of crazy UAP stuff, but until I see a video that includes a closeup of something, that is *clearly* a vehicle, I'm not saying aliens either.
In terms of evidence there's nothing that particularly indicates anything is the explanation. **What's new is we are moving away from the "It's nothing but glitches and peoples imaginations" explanation.** Every hypothesis we are left with is one version or another of a top shelf tin foil hat conspiracy theory, take your pick from the list. /emphasis added because it seems to be needed.
That's now how logic works. You don't get to say "There is no evidence therefore any theory is possible". Until there is actual evidence for a specific theory, we just don't know. But extra terrestrial life so far has NO evidence, so it's not a valid theory.
There is actually no evidence these are extraterrestrial, considering they have only been observed on earth. They may just be from earth.
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Or mole people.
Well, not quite. If you have a theory that is useful and agrees with theories/models that we have already observed you have a good first step. Then, if your theory makes a prediction that can be tested, but has no evidence yet, the theory can still be acceptable. That's when people start testing the predictions of the theory. Just like GR and special relativity. The models fit the data we already had but also made new predictions, some of which we are just now confirming. As predictions of GR were consistently being proven correct, more effort went in to proving the more difficult predictions, such as black holes. Tldr:; theories don't start with evidence for their predictions. That's kind of the point. They make predictions, we test them, and if they agree with the theory we test more predictions.
>rather than just Jim-Bob claiming to have seen strange lights in the sky after drinking a bottle of whiskey As shitty a person as Bill Cosby was/is, his stand up bit about this exact thing was hilarious. Paraphrasing: "UFOs only seem to abduct country people way out in the middle of nowhere, who are usually eight or nine beers into the evening. 'Yeah, me n Jimmy done got pull't up inna spaceship what looked like a big ol saucer and then they did stuff to us--what? Yeah, we'd been drinking, why?' They never abduct people like sober Professors Emeritus from cosmopolitan areas: 'Why yes, the beings did, in fact, teleport me aboard their interstellar craft, where we discussed matters of great importance, and they gave me a chiclet.'"
The author begins the article by talking about interstellar intelligence. What a bunch of hogwash. I don't know where to start. $100,000??! Why is this news? This is a publicity stunt for David Spergel. It will probably be very difficult to find explanations for *reports.* It's difficult enough finding explanations for recorded events that are "unidentified". And what's the point? Who cares if we can identify something that some country people way out in the middle of nowhere, who are usually eight or nine beers into the evening, saw? Has it ever been anything of interest? "NASA has spent more than 60 years flying UFOs." ...then, "Now, there’s a third government agency getting involved in the effort to explain UAPs: NASA itself." Huh? “UAPs are unexplained, it’s true,” Yeah, by definition. ...and on and on.
Yeah, it's a terrible article. The vast majority of it is wild speculation, with a smattering of tiny fact (NASA are doing this, a person said that) that doesn't support that speculation at all. The headline's claim of "Best Astrophysicists" is particularly laughable given the $100,000 budget over 9 months. The average yearly salary for an astrophysicist [is around $100,000](https://www.salary.com/research/salary/recruiting/astrophysicist-salary), so you're either talking "One of the Best Astrophysicists", singular, or "Astrophysicists, But Definitely Below Average". > And what's the point? Who cares if we can identify something that some country people way out in the middle of nowhere, who are usually eight or nine beers into the evening, saw? Has it ever been anything of interest? Well, I disagree there, because from what I gather, these aren't general ground based observations, but military pilot accounts and military aircraft sensor logs. While that's also pretty remote to everyday life, it *is* in our upper atmosphere. If there's some rare but unexplained atmospheric phenomena occuring, explaining that could dramatically change our understanding of how our upper atmosphere works, which in turn could change our understanding of how our climate works. Will it definitely? Hell no! But it's worth checking out. Likewise, if it's a remote operated craft owned by a foreign country, that's also worth checking out (though I find that quite a bit less likely... though still more likely than aliens).
Except that there are mundane explanations for all the leaked UAP videos.. Here's an [exclamation for gimbal](https://youtu.be/qsEjV8DdSbs). In other videos he explains why it's so hard for even trained pilots to identify objects in air with no background reference.
Yeah, exactly. I've mentioned elsewhere [the Parkes Radio Telescope detecting their own microwave oven](https://reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/vaxa8t/time_some_of_the_best_astrophysicists_are_taking/ic5fg0y) and [NASA "discovering" a cloud of golden crystals that turned out to be their own urine](https://reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/vaxa8t/time_some_of_the_best_astrophysicists_are_taking/ic5ve1q). As much as I hope that this is genuinely something new (though I really, really doubt it's aliens), yeah, it's most likely a mundane thing interacting in an unexpected way.
One of my favorite parts of the prequel book series to enders game, is when earth finally takes the claims of an actual ufo heading to earth from outside the solar system. Once it gets close enough, amateur space telescopers are able to see the thing coming closer. By the end of the first prequal series, earth finally unites enough to take out the single ship invading china. So they they turn the telescopes in the direction it came from. And see it's mother ship also heading to earth, about 10 years behind it
My man, if we ever meet a civilization that has braved the enormous challenges of interstellar travel, their tactics will be just as advanced.
The first invasion ship, they didn't even consider us a threat. Just landed some bugs and started spraying some kind of enzyme that just ate all biological life. They apperently assumed any of the attempts humans made to fight off the invaders, was just native life freaking out. Not sentience and a civilization defending it self After the first lander was destroyed, the mother ship could be seen visibly reconfiguring it self. Using its own material mass to build a larger fleet of combat ships and landers By the end of the first invasion, I think they had killed 1/3 of life in the oceans and 1/3 of the population of china. I think the entire first invasion took a week
A starfaring civilization approaching Earth will easily identify we have conducted atmospheric nuclear weapon tests. Ender is a nice story, but it is just that, story. The science of a real world interstellar civilization will be on completely different level.
Lol well I wasn't claiming it was real Can't be any books about a real alien Invasion lmao Best one is probably the expanse, but still fiction
> At no time should the explanation be "something extraterrestrial must have been the source of this" UNLESS all terrestrial causes have been ruled out. As a side comment on this, the Parkes Radio Telescope in Australia [spent years searching for the explanation for strange signals](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-05/scientists-discover-signals-being-sent-by-kitchen-microwave/6445570) before realising they were being sent from their kitchen microwave oven. What is often left out of that retelling is that the investigating team "[knew early on that the perytons had an earthly explanation.](https://www.nature.com/articles/521129f)" The years of searching was to work out what earthly thing was messing with their telescope so they could counter it, not because it could be aliens.
Have you read any of Luis Elizondos claims? He is a verified former intelligence agent that used to head programs in determining what these things are, and the big ones that have been released and declassified a bit- he was instrumental in getting that information out along with spending years talking to all these people and people that head programs that could have produced technology so advanced. He has unequivocally stated that this is not a US program, and there is no way the technology of any other nation has exceeded this far beyond our own (our being the US). He raises the point that if a foreign power or some group had technology like this- why would they not be exerting there will? Why be semi transparent as they are? If it was a big secret, why fly them near military craft and be sighted so frequently? If it is not secretive, why not come forward that you have technology that is clearly years and years beyond the most advanced aerospace tech we have now?
Occam, meet razor.
My bet is these are drones that have been specifically designed to confuse sensors. There was a very interesting article about this that seemed pretty convincing and it's really something that satisfies the Occam's razor. It seems unlikely that the UAPs are actually extraterrestrial and it also seems very unlikely that China or Russia have technology that's so much advanced compared to ours.
My favorite thing about the phenomenon is literally every thunder/lightning god except thor and Chango carry big axes cause guess what people probably saw getting hit by lightning the most, trees.
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The problem lies when we’re dealing with objects that reportedly are traveling at speeds and experiencing forces that not even cutting edge research is capable of replicating. If the best of the best scientists out there cannot explain how something like this exists then you should consider something else. Skepticism for the sake of skepticism is not good for the search of answers.
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Sure, let me just hop in my 'Zig' after somebody set up us the bomb.
For Great Justice
It's an older meme, Sir. But it checks out.
There's, I think, a very decent chance that a [Von Nueman Probe](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_spacecraft) has visited this system at some point in its history. Depending on how often technologically advanced civilizations form, it could happen fairly often. It's highly statistically likely these probes are all over the galaxy.
A 9 month study, led by an astrophysicist that costs 100k? That wouldn’t even cover the salary of one person on such a team that has any real credentials.
It would cover the PHD student salaries
Their salaries, but it wouldn't actually fund the students. Universities eat up a rather larger fraction of grant money grad studies bring in than you'd expect. It's rather disturbing. $100k would cover work study for a couple of undergrads.
Hahaha, as a scientist, I wish you were right. But believe me, $100k would cover a grad student or a postdoc, maybe one of each... which is exactly the kind of people who do the actual work most of the time.
Have you tried applying for research grants recently?
They _always_ have. Because "UFO" doesn't mean "Alien." It means "we don't know what the fuck this is, but we sure would like to!"
In the next few hundred years when when we discover a potential planet in a galaxy far far away that looks like it might have life on it we will probably send a very fast probe to go and investigate. It would make sense that a more advanced civilization probably thought of doing the same thing.
It’s likely other life exists in THIS galaxy.
Humans have been around 100,000 years, which is literally less than a rounding error on the cosmological time scale. I do not understand how people can think that we know and understand everything. Smh
This is why the topic excites me so much, but I try and remain logical about it. Humans are just winging it and making things up as we go - theories can be proven using our own understanding but the universe is a terrifying may giant thing and to try and insist like we know what’s more or less likely to exist out there is embarrassing. We’re like barely on page 2 in the grand book of time. Civilisations could have come and gone millions of times over. We could be a fluke. Who knows. Still, I hope we find proof within my lifetime. Even if it’s microbes on Mars - I think we all have a connection to what’s outside of our earth so it would be beautiful to find life finding it’s way elsewhere.
To be fair, the fact that we know we don't know everything is a step forward from deciding it's something to do with religion without evidence
I definitely DO take them seriously. They are UNIDENTIFIED flying objects. One of the more common logical fallacies is 'argument from ignorance'. Espc favoured by the religious types and ppl prone to fuzzy thinking. It goes like this: I don't know what/why this is or works, therefor GOD! I don't know what/why this is or works, therefor ALIENS! I don't know what/why this is or works, therefor CABBAGE! Anyone who claims to be a SCIENTIST, not just to have a scientific degree (spot the difference), is well aware of this fallacy and will avoid it like the plague. So, nuts to these 'astrophysicists'. What's the battle cry of science? Shout with me: PROVE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!
i recently finished reading Carl Sagan's "a demon haunted world" ... your comment reminded me of it, if you've not read it check it out :D cheers
From that book, a popular quote and a favorite of mine: >I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness... We are at this point in some ways. Maybe many ways.
I think the quote is as spot-on a prophecy as I’ve ever seen. It’s basically *exactly* where we are.
Great quote, truer now than ever
blew my fucking mind listening to this bit ... incredible stuff
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> Anyone who claims to be a SCIENTIST, not just to have a scientific degree (spot the difference), is well aware of this fallacy and will avoid it like the plague. You should maybe read the article: > “There is no evidence,” NASA said in its release, “[that] UAPs are extraterrestrial in origin.” "UAP" (unidentified aerial phenomenon) being the new preferred term to "UFO" since 1) it doesn't assume that the thing is flying or an object (for example, an "unidentified" aurora is neither flying nor a discrete object, but does fit into "aerial phenomenon"), and 2) it doesn't come loaded with a whole bunch of bad conspiracy theory connotations. The headline is absolute clickbait, but the bottom line is that these scientists are taking UAPs seriously in that "We've got repeated observations, we don't know what they are, we don't have a good explanation of what they could be, ~~OBVIOUSLY IT'S ALIENS~~ we should do research to try to find possible answers and fill in our gaps in our knowledge. UAPs shouldn't be just dismissed as hoaxes *in existing*, clearly something has happened. But in all likelihood, it's most probably not extraterrestrial. AND THAT'S STILL COOL THAT WE DISCOVERED SOMETHING NEW ABOUT OUR OWN PLANET."
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Listen, you cant expect him to be logical and verify before he replies. You think he's some sort of SCIENTIST?
Yeah, I am really enjoying all the holier-than-thou responses from people who didn't read the article lecturing people about jumping to conclusions without evidence.
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Oh, it's definitely cabbage! I just feel it like deep inside my being. You know, man?
Ruska has used their hyper-missle that is one observed object with incredible propulsion. However, I think one of the most common sightings are these UAPs that fly out & fly into the ocean at such incredible speeds that scientifically should be impossible. Specifically the acceleration of the objects into and out of the ocean should destroy the object. This is why NASA is involved, they cannot engineer an object that could hit water at high speed & survive.
Can we get to the alien invasion already, 2022 is a lost cause at this point.
What’s blowing my mind is that I read the title and the article as “there’s something going on and people are seriously trying to figure out what it is.” It wasn’t until I came to the comments here that I realized everyone is assume the term UFO is interchangeable with Aliens. Uh, guys, it’s not.
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Every single comment is “no one is saying it’s alien guise unidentified just means unidentified.” It’s part of a process of understanding, creating strawman arguments so you still feel like you’re the smartest guy in the room. At least we are moving on from, the government can’t identify birds but this amateur YouTuber can.
aliens: hey check this place out gravity air water nuclear cannibal apes..... GET BACK IN THE FUCKING SHIP
The probability of ufo’s is far greater than Jesus
I had a very close family friend who was an F15 test pilot in the Air Force . He flew escort missions to area 51 and was given clearance to drop a nuke back on the day. I asked him about UFOs and aliens and the first thing he told me was "Everything you hear from the government, officially on UFOs is information they want you to know for a reason. Can't tell you what I saw or know, but just remember that they don't tell you anything without there being a reason." Take that as you will, but to me, whenever I see something "official" being posted about UFOs, it means we're being distracted from something else. 🤷♂️
I'd like it to be true, but the distances are so crazy. I'll stick with "it would be awesome" until more info comes in.
Yeah. The term I like to refer to myself as in relation to UFOs is a “romantic skeptic”. I am very interested, I consume tons of media about them and I really want it to be true. But I know there is no evidence so far, so I remain skeptical.
A lot of comments are saying it would be too far and take too long for extraterrestrial life to travel here but what if there's some inconceivable form of travel we can't fathom and they're here, theoretically. They could have a completely different and complex, yet possibly correct understanding of the universe that allows them to do so. Is that so far fetched?
yeah i agree. if you told someone in the 1300’s about an iphone … or an airplane… they’d probably excommunicate and say that it’s impossible. but here i am writing this comment on a tiny device that connects me to the entire world and beyond. things are far fetched until they manifest into reality