UFOs, are they real? Do you believe?
Just something I was curious about before I go back to work, I've been watching quite a few documentaries ( though some of them are pretty bloody ballsy calling themselves such ) on the topic and would love to get some input from the lovely folks around here!
I find several cases quite compelling and they certainly raise some questions. I draw your gaze to a case in Australia in the 60's at a school near Melbourne.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westall_UFO#Unofficial_investigation
The quintessential UFO case is also worth the read;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roswell_ufo
I found it interesting the USAAF released a statement that said they had a flying disc, then took it back the next day. Even children know, no takesy backsies. . .
I also found Rendlesham Forest to be rather interesting. I was amused that he took photos, sent them to the base lab and the photo lab said that none of them came out and then refused to give him the negatives back.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendlesham_Forest_incident
It's very possible many of these are simply black projects, natural phenomenon or easily explainable occurrences under unusual circumstances. However, there are a few there can make one generally think. The biggest problem I've had is finding information that isn't biased one way or the other. It's something that people gravitate to one extreme or the other where I tend to find myself in the middle. . . I don't think we are alone in the universe, it is after all infinite, but I don't know if all the worlds governments are going so far as building alliances and trading technology behind the general public's back. . .
I find several cases quite compelling and they certainly raise some questions. I draw your gaze to a case in Australia in the 60's at a school near Melbourne.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westall_UFO#Unofficial_investigation
The quintessential UFO case is also worth the read;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roswell_ufo
I found it interesting the USAAF released a statement that said they had a flying disc, then took it back the next day. Even children know, no takesy backsies. . .
I also found Rendlesham Forest to be rather interesting. I was amused that he took photos, sent them to the base lab and the photo lab said that none of them came out and then refused to give him the negatives back.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendlesham_Forest_incident
It's very possible many of these are simply black projects, natural phenomenon or easily explainable occurrences under unusual circumstances. However, there are a few there can make one generally think. The biggest problem I've had is finding information that isn't biased one way or the other. It's something that people gravitate to one extreme or the other where I tend to find myself in the middle. . . I don't think we are alone in the universe, it is after all infinite, but I don't know if all the worlds governments are going so far as building alliances and trading technology behind the general public's back. . .
- UFO, are they real? Do you believe?40 votes
- No such thing. We are alone.10.00%
- Hasn't happened yet, but we can't be alone.62.50%
- Yes, I believe they have been here, but no one is sure.15.00%
- Yes, I believe they have been here and the public is being lied to.12.50%
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On topic, this is one my favorites.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonnie_Zamora_incident
I found the Air Forces' letter to the CIA quite interesting.
Major Hector Quintanilla head of the Air Forces 'Project Bluebook' wrote; "There is no doubt that Lonnie Zamora saw an object which left quite an impression on him. There is also no question about Zamora's reliability. He is a serious police officer, a pillar of his church, and a man well versed in recognizing airborne vehicles in his area. He is puzzled by what he saw and frankly, so are we. This is the best-documented case on record, and still we have been unable, in spite of thorough investigation, to find the vehicle or other stimulus that scared Zamora to the point of panic."
-the expectations for life to reach the level of complexity to form a cooperating body are most unlikely to happen. If there's any type of life in 2 cubic ly, I would bet that it's just bacteria or even more primitive types of life.
-with the universe being infinite and constantly expanding, there would surely be aliens like we imagine them, but, well, maybe they are more than 0,9*10^87 kiloparsecs away, and I bet that distance isn't one of those you travel every day (one parsec = 3.16 light years, and a light year is 9460730472580800 meters long).
-I am so cynical I would actually need to *touch* one myself to start thinking that they could be real.
-I am mostly unable to believe in others at all
I say:
No.
In all likelihood, if intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe, they are either:
(a) advanced enough to monitor us and extract information without scouting, the use of actual aliens, or any sort of crazy abductions and experiments; or
(b) so advanced or apathetic that they have no interest in us, or have already gathered all the information they desire and left long before we could ever detect or notice them.
The whole idea of ancient aliens, abductions, and scouting missions are absurd and unrealistic. It may be true that nobody knows how aliens look, think, or behave, and it may be true that we can't feasibly conceive of their desires, technologies, or motives, but there is one thing I'm quite sure of: if they exist, they don't care. And if they do, you better believe they're advanced enough to avoid our detection.
EDIT: As for those purported sightings, they're probably all either false reports, mistaken witnesses, hoaxes, or reports of human technology. Yes, it's all intriguing and at times I can find myself wanting to believe it all, but in the end I simply cannot rationalize it. I have no doubt in my mind that the world's governments are hiding information from the general public, not to mention advanced technologies currently still being tested, but aliens? Really? Yeah, I believe we aren't alone in this universe either, but I'm not so egotistic to believe that they give a damn about our species, or that we can somehow see past their million-years-into-the-future advanced tech. Come on now, people.
Aliens are a great phantasy theme to make films and sob stories of fame-starving loonies. Much like other things, it exploits the human's fear of the unknown, or passive drive of our own "imagination blooming by itself to self-cover the unknown", in a pitiful attempt to emulate ourselves as knowing/perceiving everything around us, just because we cannot stomach and accept that there are some things we do not know, we cannot know, and we couldn't ever understand, much less describe and analyze. Which leads to the obvious, logical result, of the awareness and ultimate realization of the futility and error in such approaches.
I wouldn't fear/concern myself with/try to find "aliens", in front of things or in their backsides. What i am most concerned with, is HUMAN and HIS/HER activities. Because that is the most dangerous animal on the loose and in the reigns of an entire world, god help... Instead of UFOs, i would be more troubled by the H.A.A.R.P. facilities for example, the technology putting a permanent end to human dignity/privacy/decency, the spying on all telecommunications, the ability of satellites to spy on civilians and into their residence, the medicines that come to "solve" human released diseases that started as failed experiments or intended pandemic assault, that kind of stuff.
And god, our own arrogance... Extraterrestrial life HAS to be like us, right? Two hands, two feet, one head... There IS life. But until now, only bacteria, protozoa, and simple life forms have been found, on moon and mars. I seriously hope for something more complex, at least near us, but i neither await this discovery eagerly, nor jump to easy conclusions about how they would look, based on our own looks and habits. I admit my ignorance. An ancient man who said that, history named him a sage among sages. Wisdom does not fantasize to cover its inability to perceive beyond our own limitations; it realizes said limitations, instead, and struggles to remain tightly inside their boundaries! THAT, is REAL wisdom!
P.S. Also, it is a great scapegoat (aliens) to keep us away from prying into harmful human activities, instead...
Consider how life could have started here, whether you believe the big bang, primordial ooze, evolution, or a booming voice that people call God who happened to be an alien in a spaceship who planted a version of their DNA on this planet, pushing our early civilisations in particular directions*. Regardless of which one of the literally thousands of theories and derivative theories that people believe, there is no reason to think that life couldn't evolve the same way on another planet. Now consider just how vast the observable universe is. I think the more appropriate question is: what are the chances that we are alone in the universe?
* this being one I heard someone say many years back. Apparently, it is actually a belief that quite a few people have. I am considerably more open minded than I was back then, but I still don't know what to think about it.
Realistically I think most UFOs are most like from earth in origin. I wouldn't mind being proven wrong though.
In the end, I find no reason why extraterrestrials would be interested in us whatsoever, especially if life is abundant in the Universe and therefore countless planets with primitive species of roughly the same technological level as us probably exist. If aliens exist, the likelihood of them choosing us as their prime candidate for investigation is, I presume, astronomically low. That is, of course, assuming they have interest in exploration and investigating other lifeforms whatsoever.
Since Earth is literally the ONLY example in all of the explored Known Universe (thus far) to harbor ANY form of intelligent life, virtually any guess or opinion regarding the possibility and abundance of extraterrestrial life is possible. It could be that life can only evolve to the levels Earth exhibits if the atmosphere is like that of Earth; it could be that planets must possess certain qualities in order to even have the chance of hosting intelligent life, such as a certain gravitational pull, or a certain place in its respective solar system, or the strength and reliability of its electromagnetic barrier, etc.; or it could be that intelligent life is abundant in the Universe and that organisms can evolve into intelligent lifeforms virtually anywhere if given enough time.
We simply don't know. And since we're the only example of life on such a grand scale, there's no feasible way of formulating any equations or scientifically sound predictions regarding the topic either. It's all speculation until the landmark event that'll change human history occurs, our first contact with an intelligent alien species—if indeed they exist at all. At that point, the argue will turn from whether intelligent exists or can exist elsewhere in the Universe to how abundant intelligent life in the Universe is. It could be that we and our newfound alien friends are the only two species known to each other in the Universe, or that other intelligent life existed but has since gone extinct through war or natural disaster. It could be that the aliens are the conquerors themselves and we're next in their path of intergalactic domination.
In the end, it could be that intelligent life beside our own once existed in this Universe, but have all died out long ago. It could be that right now, we are truly alone because we are the last living evolved species in the cosmos. Or not. But we won't know until first Contact is made.
There's probably plenty of other life out there, or was at one time or another... But we can never reach them. If humans detected alien life today around the nearest star. We'd become extinct before getting half way there... or the aliens would. If we DID reach the aliens we'd just enslave them or kill them, like we do with everything else.
Nah, I have no faith in human anything. That's what I was trying to get across with my last sentence, that even if we reached them we'd never accept them... I'm always bad at putting thoughts to words. I just know humans are butchering eachother right now as we sip coffee... killing eachother over petty things like colour and religion, and it's been this way since forever... The chance of us uniting and accepting aliens is about the same chance of meeting aliens in the first place.
1) Any civilization that has the technology to reach us can defeat us without firing a single weapon. They just have to push some big stones in our direction and sit in their ships eating the alien equivalent of popcorn while our entire civilization is destroyed...
2) Why would they even bother? Any resource available on Earth is easily obtained in other places. Water is more abundant in the rings of Saturn than on Earth, there is gold, iron and others in the asteroid fields. Really every time I see someone saying that Ancient Aliens came here to mine gold I have to laugh.
3) If they want to study us then it's better to do this from far away so that their presence does not disturb the normal workings of our civilization. They could set up a listening/watching station inside the Oort cloud and we would never know it was there.
4) Language is a barrier. They would have to translate languages that have no roots in their own culture. We still have no available translation for some ancient languages that developed in our own world, just imagine trying to translate a language that has no known roots to you.
Aliens were in our past and they're around now, indiscreetly that is. Just look at the ancient cities and other ancient marvels. Primitive humans didn't move around 50-100 ton rocks to make a wall or a building. Humans didn't have precise instruments to make perfect cuts in granite, diamonds and other hard objects. A lot of our history is lost unfortunately. We're a race with amnesia.
But I'm a skeptical believer. So I don't believe every story out there.
I've seen a UFO in the night sky once. It was an unidentified flying object, I couldn't identify it. So it was true to the acronym of UFO. It was a light high up in the sky. It moved fast like a jet but it made movements that would be impossible for a jet to make. It wasn't a light from the ground, it was too far up for that.
2) I definitely agree to this, but I still find it all a bit too human to assume that. While that's certainly true, it could be that these alien civilizations have never encountered the resources found on Earth, and may eradicate all life, or at least human life, to clear the way for proper investigation, in much the same way we would exterminate entire colony of insects to investigate some new phenomenon in the area—or entire civilizations of fellow humans just so that we can properly discover a new continent. It could also be that these resources are very rare in the Universe and that they are prized for their rarity as an economic boon to extraterrestrial civilizations.
(You can skip this next part; it's basically me digressing and considering the topic of how aliens evolved, which indirectly ties into what motives they may have in taking the Earth's resources.)
This could mean that they are a highly militaristic society, since they never developed their ethics enough to introduce ideas like humanity (or the alien equivalent), benevolence, respect, honor, etc. (Or, they developed these ideas, but dismissed them in favor of martial conquest, which they deem superior.) This could also mean that they may be extremely advanced in technology or other sciences, but due the unique nature of their home planet(s), they never had a reason to develop any understanding for medicine or biology past the basics, thus rendering them vulnerable to biological warfare.
What does this all have to do with your original question? Well, if it is possible that other civilizations can have widely disparate levels of progress and advancement in their fields of study, that means they may still practice rather primitive economic standards and still rely on physical currency, or at least a physical "gold standard." As a result, some of the resources on Earth may be increasingly valuable or new to these alien civilizations, and therefore valuable to their economy.
Overall, though? Yeah, I find it hard to believe aliens would have any use for the resources available on Earth. I already seriously doubt the whole "unequal advancement" idea described above, but even if it is true, the chances of their economy as being the least advanced (or not advanced enough) just makes the whole enterprise that much more improbable.
3) This is exactly my point in my previous post. Why would they be so inept as to actually be detected by primitives? Aliens are surely smarter, or at least more advanced, than that.
4) I mean, I guess you could assume that these aliens are advanced enough, or experienced enough with civilizations evolutionarily alien to their own, that they've developed some sort of process or mathematical formula for decoding any language. Or it could be that this very language barrier is the reason why aliens abduct some of us (and it's not just paranoid bullshit from backwater hicks who like to spin tales). But I think I've posited enough crazy hypotheticals in this post, so I'll just agree with you: the language barrier would definitely hinder any progress in understanding our species on any complex level, thereby deterring aliens from getting more involved.
do I think ufos visit our planet no