Do You Believe In UFOs? (phenomenon, Mars, light, aliens)

[kletter1mann]

Originally Posted by vanguardisle

Thank you for your post I respect your differing opinion but what do you believe the explanation for those strange sightings by people are if you do not think they are UFOs?

This the most absurd logic imaginable. You're saying that UFO's must be real - a hypothesis for which there's no direct evidence - because somebody else can't come up with an alternative explanation?
Moderator cut: against TOS To be clear, I'm talking about the lights in the sky that people report as UFO's, not the question of whether extraterrestrial life exists. I firmly believe it does.

[redguard57]

I think it's very unlikely that Earth is the only planet with life in the universe. The chances of that, given how many stars there are just in our galaxy then how many galaxies there are in the universe would be so infinitesimally small it's hard to imagine.

However, space is very, Very, VERY big and also very old. It has only been a few hundred years since we figured out that the earth revolves around the sun. It has only been since 1988 that we had confirmed observations of an exoplanet. Seriously, my car has been around longer than we've known for sure that other stars have planets. Before that we just assumed other stars had planetary systems. That 27 years is a millionth of a microsecond in universe time.

It's quite possible that civilizations like ours have progressed and died out long before humans ever existed. They may even have built star empires that lasted a million years, but then died out in the 2nd million. Still only a few seconds in cosmic time.

I think that a civilization capable of bending the rules of physics OR having reached a plane of existence in which the time to cross space no longer matters to them would have little interest in our planet. What we have would be less interesting to them than ants in Siberia have to us.

How many humans are there? 7 billion.
How many of them are intellectually interested in ants? Maybe 50-100,000 at best, and most of them are amateurs. There are maybe 10,000 actual scientists studying ants exclusively in the world. Myrmecology is a branch of entymology, but one of the less populous branches of the science - ants are less interesting than spiders or bees.
How many humans are so interested that they will make a trip to a desolate place in Siberia to study one particular sub-species of ant? A couple hundred, maybe, would consider such a thing, in reality maybe a couple dozen and then maybe 1 every 5 years gets the funding & resources to make the trip.

Multiply that on a cosmic scale and you have the likelihood of Earth being visited by intelligent life on any given day.

So I think it's likely that Earth has been visited - from what we know so far, planets capable of supporting life are probably unique enough to warrant study, but I doubt it's happened during humanity's existence, and even less likely to have happened during the very short period that humans have been aware of the larger universe.

[RcHydro]

Originally Posted by redguard57

I think it's very unlikely that Earth is the only planet with life in the universe. The chances of that, given how many stars there are just in our galaxy then how many galaxies there are in the universe would be so infinitesimally small it's hard to imagine.

However, space is very, Very, VERY big and also very old. It has only been a few hundred years since we figured out that the earth revolves around the sun. It has only been since 1988 that we had confirmed observations of an exoplanet. Seriously, my car has been around longer than we've known for sure that other stars have planets. Before that we just assumed other stars had planetary systems. That 27 years is a millionth of a microsecond in universe time.

It's quite possible that civilizations like ours have progressed and died out long before humans ever existed. They may even have built star empires that lasted a million years, but then died out in the 2nd million. Still only a few seconds in cosmic time.

I think that a civilization capable of bending the rules of physics OR having reached a plane of existence in which the time to cross space no longer matters to them would have little interest in our planet. What we have would be less interesting to them than ants in Siberia have to us.

How many humans are there? 7 billion.
How many of them are intellectually interested in ants? Maybe 50-100,000 at best, and most of them are amateurs. There are maybe 10,000 actual scientists studying ants exclusively in the world. Myrmecology is a branch of entymology, but one of the less populous branches of the science - ants are less interesting than spiders or bees.
How many humans are so interested that they will make a trip to a desolate place in Siberia to study one particular sub-species of ant? A couple hundred, maybe, would consider such a thing, in reality maybe a couple dozen and then maybe 1 every 5 years gets the funding & resources to make the trip.

Multiply that on a cosmic scale and you have the likelihood of Earth being visited by intelligent life on any given day.

So I think it's likely that Earth has been visited - from what we know so far, planets capable of supporting life are probably unique enough to warrant study, but I doubt it's happened during humanity's existence, and even less likely to have happened during the very short period that humans have been aware of the larger universe.

" How many of them are intellectually interested in ants? Maybe 50-100,000 at best, and most of them are amateurs. There are maybe 10,000 actual scientists studying ants exclusively in the world. Myrmecology is a branch of entymology, but one of the less populous branches of the science - ants are less interesting than spiders or bees".

If this is true. Lets hope they dont get their hands on a really large magnifying glass, and do to us what I use to do to ants when I was a kid.

[boxus]

I do not beleive any alien lintelligent life has visited Earth. This is distinctly different than believing intelligent life exists on other planets in the Universe.

-There is zero proof of any visits, to this day a UFO is like bigfoot, lots of talk and BS visuals, no evidence at all. I will say I think the possibility of a visit from an alien is far more likely than bigfoot existing.
- The whole "lights in the sky" thing is idiotic, as if aliens are going to have their lights on flying around.
- It is always the same BS story, and it is always the person who already thinks they exist and come to Earth frequently, or someone who makes sure to state "I never believed in UFOs until blah blah blah happened to me", and they all have some blury pic of a light in the sky, or some other visual and/or story. This is the same with bigfoot and every other this type of issue.

[Fletchman]

Look, if you've seen something bizarre in the sky, it changes you. I know whatever it was has changed me.

A slow moving, silent, triangular shaped object just above the treeline gets your attention pretty fast. Something like that can't possibly be civilian and it certainly isn't something the military is going to admit to having at its disposal.

I took a college level class on astronomy and the professor emphasized the vast distances in space and it certainly seems impossible that anything could travel that far.

But there really isn't any way to explain the thousands of sightings each year from pilots, law enforcement, ex-military etc.

[Unsettomati]

Originally Posted by vanguardisle

Do you believe in UFOs?

Do I believe there are flying objects that are unidentified? But that doesn't mean anything. Just because there's a bogey on the radar does mean they're Interstellar Scouts from Alpha Centauri. A much better explanation is that they are aircraft built by humans, or cloud formations, or solar interference with the radar. Why? Because we know such things exist.

Do I believe Earth has been visited by intelligent life from other planets? No. Now, I'm open to being convinced of such. By evidence. But lacking evidence? No.

I do . The universe is so large it seems unlikey there is not life on another planet somewhere, and there have been so many documented sightings of phenomena here on Earth that cannot be explained I do I really do. What is your opinion?

I'm not convinced by vague notions of what 'seems' one way or the other to someone. Nor am I swayed even remotely by arguments from personal incredulity.

As for unexplained phenomena, every culture has 'explained' things by making up explanations that have no basis at all in reality. The ancient Egyptians, ignorant of Newtonian mechanics and fusion, decided that the Sun was explainable as a deity riding a flaming chariot across the daily sky. That may have made some of the ancient Egyptians happy to think that way, but such takes had no relation to reality.

Making up stories unsupported by a shred of evidence is no substitute for evidence.

Also if you are a Star Trek, Star Wars, or other Sci Fi fan is it because you believe in life on other planets?

Please... both franchises have only the thinnest veneer of a scientific sheen to their classic western-narrative plots.

[Bluesmama]

I believe in the possibility and am inclined to think, "Why not???"

I know a couple of people who swear they have seen one.

[hoffdano]

I believe there is life away from Earth.

But I don't believe in UFOs. We have never been visited by aliens. Not everything that is a mystery has an explanation. I think visitors from elsewhere would have left obvious trails. The evidence wouldn't be blurry photos. It would be unambiguous in some way.

[Linda_d]

Originally Posted by boxus

I do not beleive any alien lintelligent life has visited Earth. This is distinctly different than believing intelligent life exists on other planets in the Universe.

-There is zero proof of any visits, to this day a UFO is like bigfoot, lots of talk and BS visuals, no evidence at all. I will say I think the possibility of a visit from an alien is far more likely than bigfoot existing.
- The whole "lights in the sky" thing is idiotic, as if aliens are going to have their lights on flying around.
- It is always the same BS story, and it is always the person who already thinks they exist and come to Earth frequently, or someone who makes sure to state "I never believed in UFOs until blah blah blah happened to me", and they all have some blury pic of a light in the sky, or some other visual and/or story. This is the same with bigfoot and every other this type of issue.

I agree.

• I accept that intelligent life, probably considerably more intelligent/learned than we are, exists elsewhere in the universe simply because the universe is so very large, and our sun and its planetary system is so very ordinary.
• I also think that given the increasing pace of technological advance here on Earth, that a civilization only a few hundred years older than ours could very well have the means to at least investigate life on planets outside their own solar systems without every leaving their own.
• Any civilization that had the ability to travel to other star systems would be able to learn everything they wanted/needed to know about us without ever coming anywhere near the Earth's atmosphere ... and we would never even know they were there!

[Floorist]

I believe in UFOs. Are they from another planet? I don't know. Could there be intelligent life elsewhere? I hope so. There sure isn't much intelligent life on this planet.