RichVR
1770
I loved those. Someone should do another. No, not me. :)
I would think, that the press or the pentagon and whoever acknowledges that there is practically zero chance that aliens from outer space are coming to earth.
Not only that the nearest inhabitable planet is many lightyears away, also, that imaginary advanced civilization needed to evolve in a similar timeframe as we, not 1 million years ago, because they could be extinct already if the time difference is too big.
Also, the probability for life to evolve is small, so a huge galaxy could produce enough civilizations, but not necessary close to each other.
So what is this all actually about?
China/Russia → maybe
Some US secret tech thing → could be
Fake reports → maybe, but why?
Anything is more plausible than actual aliens from outter space, sorry.
Cats. They’ve developed opposable thumbs in secret. We are doomed.
sure. And even if an advanced civilization could evolve in our timeframe, there are galaxies between us.
But, maybe they understand how quantum mechanics and gravity works together and they figured it all out, so that they can cut millions of lightyears of distances.
How would they find earth? It’s like looking for a specific hay in an enormous haystack. No way, no way. Until I get anal probed by aliens, I will doubt aliens have visted earth ;)
We should look for reasonable explanaitions first, do the Sherlock thing. If we can rule out everything else, then we can look for aliens.
“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
The pentagon has ruled out US tech, so I guess another nation state is next on the list. Considering this tech was on display 20 years ago (maybe even since the late forties) it’s suprising they have not found some information out there by now. I guess we will see what they come up with.
Menzo
1776
Maybe they have trillions of autonomous craft searching for signs of life.
Maybe they’ve achieved the singularity and can live for eons.
Who knows. I don’t think any of this is aliens, but saying it can’t possibly be aliens is naive IMO.
Timex
1777
If intelligent life is rare, then it’s unlikely that it arose in proximity to earth such that it could ever get here in the time we’ve started broadcasting our existence to everyone.
If intelligent life is not rare, then there’s little reason why anyone would even give a shit about us and bother coming out here.
Humans have a habit of thinking we are a lot more special and interesting than we are.
Citation? All we know so far is that some of them were indeed US tech.
Weather baloons/instrument issues are next on the list. According to the latest reports in some cases this is a feasible explanation.
Citation? All we have is two videos from 16 years ago. The evidence we have from the late forties is not only bad, it’s been proven to be faked in pretty much every single case people have really looked into it.
Also, citation that this is tech at all and not a malfunction or metereological phenomenon?
Yeah, we really need to start there. The overwhelming bulk of “UFO” reports are mundane phenomena, instrument issues, and optical illusions. It’s part of the reason you never seem to see UFO reports from folks that look at the sky for a living (astronomers, meteorologists…) - they know what they’re seeing.
KevinC
1780
Unless our astronomy and meteorology communities have been infiltrated by the aliens and they’re hiding the information. Did you even think about that???
Honestly, if some of my colleagues were lizard people that would explain a few things.
MikeJ
1782
Life bearing planets could be rare enough to be worth sending some self-replicating system to the system in question, but not so rare that you’d have to search the whole galaxy to find one.
If you have really good self-replicating technology, then spreading some kind of sensor network over the galaxy is something that could be done given enough time.
I’m going to go one further–even if you rule out all known physically possible meteorological phenomena for a given observation, Occam’s Razor still holds that we should consider it to be an unknown, laws-of-physics-violating meteorological phenomenon rather than aliens, because you need fewer assumptions to get there. For aliens, you need to assume violation of known physics + intelligence + other stuff about galactic distances and timescales, but for a new meteorological event you only need to assume violation of known physics.
well… the Pentagon might not be honest, I know, sounds strange. I would calculate this as more probable than an UFO from outter space …
I mean, you don’t even have to do that. Just assume you don’t know all physically possible meteorological phenomena, which we don’t, because we have an imperfect understanding of weather.
Occam’s razor is pointless for fixing on a solution among many unlikely possibilities; it’s more to the point in cutting away the unlikely ones when a likely one is actually present.
Anyway, I’d be more likely to go with a combination of factors including pranking military officers who were eager to exploit whatever camera glitch or optical or meteorological phenomenon may account for these little dancing dots. The fact that civilian and foreign military pilots seem never to encounter these things seems telling. And when you take into account the widespread propensity for USN and USAF military pilots in peacetime to entertain themselves…
Timex
1788
I don’t think UFOs are real, but I don’t think this statement is accurate.
orald
1789
I don’t think we are being visited by aliens, at least I hope we are not. But if it is aliens I’m with Stephen Hawking and fear a Cortez-type visitation interested in Mother Earth in spite of us humans.
Best keeps our heads down.
