Not much of a comment here. I just think there is a lot that we don’t understand. But I haven’t studied this topic at all.
Sure I believe that somewhere in this infinite universe there is a race of being that have evolved far enough to come up wityh some sort in technology to travel great distances through space. Do I think they are visiting the Earth? I really don’t know. I don’t see why they would. Hell, I don’t even want to be on this planet a lot of the time. But if they are visiting I could definately understand why they would try to avoid being seen. Think about it, if humans had the technology to visit other planets and found one that had life on it which had not yet evolved to the same level of technology as us we would almost definately begin to immediately pass laws prohibiting any sort of interaction with this new race. All those bleeding hearts out there would be too concerned with us disrupting thier natural evolution. But at the same time we would want to learn as much about this alien planet as we could. So we would secretly start abducting creatures from that planet to study. I don’t know if Earth is being visited by aliens but if it is than IMHO thier behavior makes perfect.
Firstly the technology may not exist, no matter what level of sophistication your society reaches.
Secondly, assuming you can cross Galatic distances, you’d think your technology could come up with something which was better concealed.
Any human being can look up at the sky and see you - I think you need a better strategy!
Ah, a Republican!
Well obviously you’d be monitoring Earth communications (that’s probably how you found the planet in the first place). Once the first person complains of being abducted (use better anaesthetics!), you’d have to reconsider your policy. But the reports just keep coming…
Of course none of this logic applies to UFOlogists.
If there is ‘evidence’ of a UFO sighting, that proves UFO’s exist.
If there is no ‘evidence’ of a UFO sighting, that proves UFO’s exist (but that they are clever at covering their tracks).
If a scientist says he believes in UFO’s, that proves UFO’s exist.
If the Government says there is no ‘evidence’ of UFO’s, that proves UFO’s exist (because there is a Government conspiracy).
Then by your own admission, you are the one that is holding us back? 
personal beleifs:
UFO’s exist? Yes, as several have noted above, it does not need to be extraterrestrial in origin to be unidentified.
Life on planets other than Earth? Yep, I don’t have facts on this, so for me it’s an article of faith, cannot be proven or disproven.
Aliens visitng us? Nah, not really. The whole hiding in plain sight and doing “studies” etc, seems too human a rationale, unless one presupposes a human like culture or human like thinking, these justifications don’t add up., And given the history of man and it’s culture, if these obviously technologically superior beings would probably, if they held to same type of culture, do what we all to often do, conquer and steal the good stuff.
However, when I do not try to analyze all this, I do like to think that mebbe that strange light is aliens. And I can suspend my disbelief to watch X-files, or certain Sci-Fi movies. I guess there is still some romance in my soul after all…
But deep down, no, don’t beleive alien visits anymore than ley lines.
I believe that anything is within the realm of possibility but apart from my personal spiritual beliefs I only focus on the here and now and there is no evidence of extra-terrestrial life. Except of course, us.
First of course we have to define life.
Some ‘itty bitti’ critters from Mars? Rode in on a rock? Way cool.
Ask a 1000 comercial pilots.
Ask them with absolute anonymity.
Look at the 'Platypus"!!! Bwhahahaha … oops, sorry.
Get a globe, a string and go from Easter Island to the Great Pyramids. Pay attentuion to where the string crosses the West coast of South America.
IA and CS were too cool. Too bad we did not get them instead of BC and GB…
:::::; flee :::::::
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by hudley
Next time was a year or so later…They didn’t appear to be at high altitude, but higher than tree level, and they didn’t make a sound. It was like seeing the exhaust from a rocket or something.
It’s been pointed out by Cecil that determining altitude by sight is very difficult. Scale can cause things to seem closer or farther away than they actually are. I don’t doubt you saw something, but it’s very easy to fool ourselves into thinking something is really large and far away and moving very fast when it’s actually close by, small and relatively slow. It’s especially easy at night.
I would love to learn that interstellar extraterrestrials have come to earth, if for no other reason, because it would mean that interstellar travel is possible and maybe even practical. I’m sure there must be intelligent life on other planets, but I’m very skeptical about alien visitors. Of course, if aliens do arrive and tell us they’re the great to the 12th power grandchildren of the people who set out from their planet, and travelled at about 1/2 light speed, I’ll still be happy to see them, but bummed about the travel time. Tourism will definitely be set back.
I guess I’m joining the crowd here. I believe it is more likely than unlikely that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the galaxy. I believe it is reasonably likely that this intelligent life has achieved a level of technological sophistication that makes interstellar travel feasible. I believe it is within the realm of possibility that said intelligent life with said technology is (a) in our galactic neighborhood as well as (b) extant in our own era (consider a several-billion-year-old universe, plus the fact that our own industrial sophistication is maybe a hundred years old).
But I have seen absolutely nothing to make me think that visitations are actually occurring on our planet and in our time. Knowing what I know about how humans process information and form generalized explanations, the available data far better supports a hypothesis of wishful thinking and after-the-fact rationalization than anything else.
Doesn’t mean I wouldn’t think it’d be amazingly cool if it were happening, though, or if it does happen in my lifetime. I’m with Carl Sagan: I’d love it to be true, and I support SETI and related efforts, but so far, the most responsible conclusion is that it isn’t happening.
‘Aliens’ could be as simple as an ethnic group on earth. Maybe they observe us, maybe they protect us from vastly different species that are not homo-sapien. ‘Interfering’ with us, so totally negates the purpose of study, they may as well just study themselves back at home – a home they might not even have any more. One might take the time to consider that travelling that far in a reasonable amount of time is actually time travel, not distance travel. The idea that ‘because they can get here means they are more intelligent than us’ is not necessarily true either. The mode of transporting here could be so ingrained and obvious from their environment that it’s the equivilent of standing in water to get wet for us =) If aliens were here, I’d ask them if they kill people. If they do; they are irrelevant as a species to converse with anyways IMO; despite whatever technological gifts they have.
I would venture to throw my ‘yes arm’ up in a poll shrug
-Justhink
I don’t believe in little green men.
However, I do think that people who claim to have seen UFOs, or have had experiences with aliens, are definitely seeing SOMETHING.
I have my ideas as to what, but this is not the time or place to discuss them.
I’m with the OP on this one; open to the possibility that some UFO sightings may be of something other than misidentified lights, celestial objects or aircraft, but somewhat handicapped by the fact that in decades of observation of the sky I’ve yet to see anything I could not reasonably identify as one of the above.
I have an extensive library of UFO-related books and have become somewhat disillusioned over the fact that many of the better-known cases of the '50s-'70s period have been positively debunked. Fair enough if they were overstated or hoaxes, but life seems a bit more interesting with the possibility of alien visitation left open.
Hardly anyone does. Little gray men, now that’s another matter.
Well, I’ve certainly seen what NASA scientist Paul Hill described as an Unconventional Flying Object. In that the objects I saw performed manouvers contemporary aircraft aren’t capable of. Back when I was in high school, me and a buddy got on his roof to watch a meteor shower. At some point, he and I spotted a red light and a blue light at opposite ends of the sky headed towards one another. We watched them as they approached each other to a close distance, then both of them spun around a common center, 180 degrees and continued on their ways. Very strange, it was a precise, mechanical movement, and not one conventional aircraft would be likely to take. What were they? I dunno, but there you have it.
I believe that the universe is well-populated with intelligent species of various sorts. I believe that with extremely rare exceptions none of them have ever traveled to meet any of the others because of the incredible distances involved. I believe that in those extremely rare cases, Species A would be unlikely to lurk around and/or return over and over to peek at Species B–they would instead drop in, say “hi”, and work out a radio frequency and communications protocol and their worlds would change through the ensuing contact. I believe that the likelihood of these extremely rare exceptions occurring between any species other than those already aware of each other through some form of electromagnetic-based communication over a period of time is ZERO followed by a decimal and a hell of a lot of zeros.
No one would “spy upon” another world for decades, centuries, millennia.
There is no galactic Federation or Empire, and no Prime Directive.
Worlds do not conquer other worlds.
There is no interstellar trade.
The above is predicated upon the correctness of Einsteinian physics, and the resulting formula for determining how much fuel it would take to shove a ship off to do random interstellar exploration of various planets long enough and often enough to come across some with intelligent inhabitants that they hadn’t known about previously. Totally impractical.
Sagan did not object to UFO sightings. What he was objecting to, at least in the book, was the senseless mania of alien adductions and associated phenomena.
Well, I can think of one reason an advanced society might do that, actually. If they stumbled across a relatively primitive society, they might want to study it, without interfering for reasons of anthropological research. Not saying that’s going on, mind you, but that’s the only reason I can think of why a civilization that stumbles across another one might not show itself.
Oh sure, why not? I believe that it’s entirely possible that life has evolved on another planet; probable, in fact. And I don’t know of a single credible datum that indicates any extraterresterial life has visited this planet, and I think any such visits are improbable.
There are myriad reasons why an otherworldly race might benefit from simply observing us. Anyone familiar with psychological observation knows that creating an environment free from the observer’s tampering is crucial to factual data collection. After all, how normal would you behave if you were being followed around by a craft?
To sit about and try to justify what an advanced race might be thinking is a fool’s errand. Consider how far our race has come in just a few thousand years. Now tell me you have the prescience to comprehend how our thought processes will have evolved 10, 20, or 30 thousand years from now.
To be staunchly against earth having been visited throughout the centuries is to deny the overwhelming evidence that there are unnatural structures on this planet, many of which we can’t justify having been built by man.
I’m not convinced anyone has gotten it right yet. Perhaps the truth isn’t out there, but something is.
I believe without a doubt that we’re not the only intelligent life in the uniververse. However, I seriously doubt that “they’re among us” and think 99% of the sightings are implausable. I can’t see them being motivated to steal people or even visit without announcing their presence, if only to prevent them from being attacked by people who would automatically assume they’re here to harm us. This does not, however, stop me from enjoying The X-files and Roswell…
tuckerfan, quoting, then replying to me:
Oh, I also can think of dozens of reasons why they might want to, given the technology. I’m saying it would not happen, given the limitations of Einsteinian physics, because they would not be running across significantly more primitive cultures in the first place, because no one, absolutely no one, is trying to explore every planet in the bloody galaxy, via physical exploration. Too costly in resources, too time-consuming, distances too permanently intimidating no matter how advanced the culture. I’m saying that intelligent races, to whatever extent they ever become aware of each other and meet up physically, do so as a result of first meeting electronically.
I’m saying: Exploring galaxy through SETI-style analysis of electromagnetic frequencies=reasonable; exploring galaxy through launching of ships and doing a fly-by of all planets, Star Trek style = prohibitively expensive in every way.
Therefore virtually no intelligent species is going to become aware of any primitive cultures in order to consider studying them for millennia.