Except there was some evidence that element 61 would exist, namely that it fit the periodic table, and that elements with every other number of protons existed, and so an element with 61 protons should exist.
That’s not the same as having a sample of it in the lab, it really is very strong evidence.
Same with other things. We look at the sun, discover the spectral emission lines for an unknown element, that is strong evidence for an unknown element that seemingly only exists in the sun. We’ll name it “Helium”, after the sun god. We know nothing about it. Oh, here it is.
Evidence of aliens doesn’t have to be a walking flopping oozing alien. It could be something else, like an alien hotel on the moon.
What makes it evidence is when the evidence can be repeated by anyone. A shaky video capture of a moving light in the sky isn’t very good evidence of aliens, because there are lots of ways that video images of moving lights can be created. An alien hotel on the moon that anyone with a telescope can examine would be different.
I wouldn’t believe in aliens just because I personally saw a transient moving light in the sky with my own eyes, because there are lots of moving (and seemingly moving) light sources in the sky created in lots of ways, and it would take hours to list all the ways that aren’t aliens. And even if we could go down the list and show that each proposed source of moving lights couldn’t have been the source of the moving light I saw, that doesn’t mean it was aliens either. It just means there’s some phenomenon that creates an apparently moving light that. Could it be an alien spacecraft? Sure, it could, but it could also be fairies. Or something else. To jump from “I can’t explain it” to “Therefore aliens” is ludicrous.
I’m with the people saying “true credible irrefutable evidence.” Given the advances in technology over the years I’ve been here, irrefutable evidence is getting tougher to come by.
A “UFO” landing on the White House Lawn would not by itself convince me, even if I was on hand to see it happen. This is because we now have too many terrestrial flying vehicles that could be made to appear to be such.
I have already seen things that I was certain in the moment were at least impossible, and gradually figured out what they actually were, so seeing an “alien” up close wouldn’t do it, especially if I was emotionally upset about the situation.
Being taken for a ride in an interstellar craft wouldn’t be convincing, because it’s too easy to make it APPEAR that I am moving when I am not, and if I were taken somewhere I didn’t recognize, all I would be certain of is that I didn’t recognize anything.
And so on. I’m not saying that I am so certain of this, that I would reject ALL data, only trying to make it clear how difficult my knowledge and experience has made the convincing.
It’s a bit similar to something much more common, such as believing that a hot girl was truly in love with me. When I was a kid, being told by her that she was hot for my bod was enough. After being through a few emotional roller coaster rides of life, I would be hard pressed to feel confident, even if she signed legal documents, went under hypnotism in my presence, and lined up everyone else I know, to tell me it was true.
Because I know how easy it is for people to fool themselves to the point where they appear to be genuinely certain.
You know what would not surprise me in the least? Is if irrefutable proof was found that something from elsewhere either stopped by, or left evidence of life elsewhere here by accident. Such as finding a million year old piece of an exploration robot, for example. It wouldn’t be life changing to have that happen either, since a single accidental visit in the distant past would have no functional meaning going forward. There are similarly “eventful” discoveries being made almost every day, and none of them have made any real difference, outside the cloisters of various scholarly disciplines. Of course, I’m also sure that there would be an explosion of annoying religious people declaring that we had to change all our hold books and start worshiping something alien, and that would be a pain in the ass, but functionally, even that would all settle down, and we’d be back to fussing over natural resources here again.
We used to think that only rocks from earth and asteroids could be found here. Then we learned that rocks from Mars could be found here, even though we’ve never been there, and even though no one has been here from Mars. It’s cool and all, but past that, it’s a big so what.
Eventually we may find that life on this planet was the result of a combination of chance events, including cometary materials being deposited here, that set everything off. Again, that would be intriguing, but when it comes to day to day life on this rock, whether or not my food is safe to eat is much more imperative.
I don’t believe that aliens have visited Earth, because I have no good reason to.
Anything like the circumstances suggested in the OP would at least potentially be a good reason, and I would at least give it some consideration.
I am agnostic as to the existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe; but the existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, or even the galaxy, does not imply a significant probability of it visiting Earth.
I do believe in the existence of UFOs in a literal sense—unidentified flying objects—I just think they have mundane, non-extraterrestrial origins.
This parallels my usual answer to “What would it take to persuade you of the existence of God?” There are too many ways to create a “false positive.” It’s (slightly!) easier to believe in a holodeck-type VR hoax than in a real alien spaceship. Sadly, it’s much easier to believe in a personal mental collapse, leading to dlusions and hallucinations, than in a real alien spaceship.
Still, if the evidence was very public, and trained observers were allowed to inspect the evidence freely…and if the aliens could explain the underlying principles of their technology in clear language we could comprehend…I’d be willing to pend disbelief. If a commission of actual space scientists declared, “Wow, this is real,” I’d give that a lot of weight.
Considering the speed an intergalactic ship would have to be able to achieve to reach this planet a little jaunt to Pluto and back, tracked by three different independent agencies, where I bring back photos that match those taken by NASA’s New Horizon would serve as solid evidence.
Did you check that your friends actually sent it? I have on several occasions gotten emails purporting to come from friends or relatives with subject lines like “Check out this interesting site” and the message is a URL. In every case, when I checked with them, it turned out the return address was spoofed. I will not follow such a link unless the message is such that it clearly comes from the person in the return address.
Now as for the OP, I stick to “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Some of your suppositions would indeed be extraordinary, if they were true. You probably know about the War of the Worlds show that millions of Americans believed was true. But if reliable news stations reported that an alien space ship had landed on the White House lawn, I would certainly start to believe it. Subject to the caveat that I was convinced it was not a hoax.
My understanding is that the distances are too far, so I believe that while intelligent life likely exists somewhere in the universe, we aren’t going to get visited here on Earth.
It would take some really serious proof. Something like if a time travelers had showed up in the 1500s with a working digital camera. Something which obviously the technology of the time was clearly impossible. Perhaps some biology which was so comply different that it couldn’t be spoofed.
The least likely would be personal experience, either mine or a trusted friend. People have hallucinations, that’s the far more likely explanation.
Easy now, my reasoning being odd or awful is just that, reasoning. I am trying to justify my own personal belief in UFO’s. The Santa Claus bit doesn’t apply here. I suppose I just want to believe. No argument from me when it comes to having some hard evidence. I would love nothing more than that. It could be worse, I could be one of those 4% that believe politics are influenced by a cabal of shape shifting reptilian aliens.
You’d need to land ET where i can see him land, let ME look at the ship, i want to see engines controls electronics wiring etc.
I see a piece of romex in there, we have issue.
I also want to know where is the Mother ship, because no earth landing vehicle is doing interstellar travel, too small…
I want to see ET too, up close and personal, and then i have a long list of questions to ask ET.
Now assuming ET travels across galaxies to see me (Or even across our own) we have some problems.
How many light years away did ET travel to see me? Because the nearest star systems are not very nearest, and im not sure about life suitability either.
So what’s ET’s life span?
If ET is flying sub light, how many generations since ET left home?
ET can not phone home, its too far away, so obviously he isn’t jabbering back and forth about his day on earth.
So how many ET’s on the mothership breeding crew replacements?
Hell how is the damned thing fueled?
If you tell me ET goes light speed, yea fine same problem as with humans.
You go 30 years at light speed to planet X, stay 1 year, then fly home.
I am 61 years older than when you left, you are maybe 3?
Potentially the people who sent you are dead, you can not even report back to them, let alone radio home.
Is ET immortal? or do his people like taking one way missions across the universe to visit a planet and never stop to actually say Hello?
We beam radio waves and float pieces of space junk out to say hello, but ET? not even a head nod? Really?
And why?
Why visit 1 little planet revolving around an ordinary medium sun where the probably most interesting members of the population are extinct and non human?
If you can zip around the universe at will, there has to be something more interesting to visit?
First person who says prime directive gets slapped
The biggest excitement I actually think about is the technology or perhaps new elements that an alien race would bring with them. I’m willing to bet alien Romex is probably more safe and reliable, unless they came here and took our idea, which would explain all of the alleged crash landings.
I actually find the last one to be the most plausible.
As for the OP…I HAVE had someone I utterly trust tell me they had a typical UFO encounter…out driving in the boonies…“something” bright, small and aerial followed their car for a while about 20 feet up and 20 feet behind them. Saucer shaped, multi bright lights. This was before drones btw…
My reaction was “Hunh.”
I mean it doesn’t affect me. Doesn’t change my worldview. They could have told me aliens operated on them and I’d still have the same reaction.
NOW if a saucer landed on the WH lawn I would think, “We are about to live in very interesting times.”
Seems to me that there are several or at least a few crypto-events (I made up that word!) out there as you describe and they always seem to just sort of fade away into this abyss of “You know we can’t explain this so…fuck it.”
So IF a million year old piece of an exploration robot were found…it would just be one more entry on a list of “Ten most amazing unexplained artifacts”. People would go “Hmmmm…” then “Did that site just give me a virus??”
Clearly we do not frequent the same parts of the internet.
But that’s a terrible way to go about life. I want to believe that a jolly old man lives at the north pole and will send me a Nintendo Switch this Christmas, but I know that isn’t true. If I decided to try to use motivated reasoning, and do everything in my power to minimize evidence against and invent (or at least tolerate far lower quality) evidence for, I can probably accept that my conclusion is valid. Because if I ignore all contradicting evidence and invent matching evidence, I can do that for any belief, no matter how absurd or nonsensical. That’s really bad reasoning. Let the evidence guide you where it leads, don’t try to lead it.
I don’t think the question matters that much, since any ET we meet is likely to be millions of years of equivalent development ahead of us. There won’t be any issues with appreciating that this is something Not Of This World (unless they chose to hide themselves, in which case we wouldn’t know they were here, and the OP doesn’t apply).
But for the sake of argument, I don’t think it would take much to convince me, and my confidence would grow over time. So a cheesy 1950s style dish lands on the white house lawn, but security agencies the world over are saying it flew into our atmosphere at .5c and somehow didn’t heat up at all as it did so…yeah I already think more likely than not it is ET, just waiting for more data to become more certain.
Too far for what? There has been plenty of time to travel the entire galaxy many times over. Not to say it’s easy or practical to do so, but “too far” in itself is wrong.
People say this a lot, but I think it is another Science Fiction fantasy. Many technologies develop in a sigmoid pattern–a long period of very slow change followed by a short period of very fast change followed by a long period of very slow change. In the 20th and early 21st century we have been in the fast change phase of many technologies, but those fast changes won’t last forever for us, and they wouldn’t last forever for alien species.
One example is computers, gong from vacuum tubes to discrete transistors to integrated circuits–then integrated circuits going from features measuring 3000 nanometers in 1977 to 10 nanometers in 2017. But you aren’t going to see chips with features 0.033 nanometers across 40 years from now or 400 years from now or 40,000 years from now or 4 million years from now–we are right now near the limit of how good portable computing is going to get, and “millions of years” more advanced aliens won’t have much better computing technology than “hundreds of years” more advanced aliens, and possibly even “dozens of years” more advance ones.
The same can be said about all other possible technologies–there is only so much strength, or hardness, or energy density, or any other useful feature that can be squeezed out of matter, and once the material sciences in that area mature there will few to any significant improvements made for the rest of ever. And, like with computer technology, we are probably a heck of a lot closer to the end of technological growth today than we are to the beginning with many areas of material science.
