It’s hard to find ‘middle’ ground between theories with no evidence and science.
Scientists will believe anything that is backed by evidence.
I completely believe in invisible stuff like gravity, WIFI and microwaves.
A flat Earth, Loch Ness Monster, perpetual motion and UFOs don’t interest me - until we get some … evidence!
If I think 2+2=4, and you say 2+2=6, what good is a middle ground? Not all viewpoints are equal.
There is no reasonable, serious middle ground between fantasy and science. Except in the movies.
What’s with the hostile attitude, I’m skeptical of UFO’s
This is the key message whose importance cannot be overemphasized, and the part of your post that I agree with. Stars and their planetary systems are so far apart that the distances are absolutely incomprehensible to the human mind. The likely distances between intelligent civilizations are so vast that they are probably effectively isolated, barring some fantastical quest for galactic colonization spanning millions of years, a project that has no clear motivation and is based on anthropomorphic projection that would probably be of little interest to any civilization advanced enough to be able to do it.
The conclusion is that even if there were a vast plethora of unexplained phenomena in the skies, virtually any natural explanation would be astronomically more likely than visiting aliens. But there are extremely few such phenomena, and even the few that are “unexplained” have very likely ordinary earthly explanations, and we just haven’t been able to pin down any specific one of them. So a belief in UFOs of extraterrestrial origin is a belief in something for which there is no evidence, and which would be a fantastically unlikely explanation even if there were evidence. It is thus the perfect description of uninformed gullibility.
This XKCD cartoon, appropriately entitled “Settled”, is relevant here.
No, it isn’t, for the reasons above. For something to be interesting, it has to have at least some theoretical plausibility. Quantum mechanics is interesting; purple unicorns are not.
(Emphasis mine.)
Those two statements seem to me to be contradictory. We know (or at least, have every reason to believe) that the universe is made of the same stuff everywhere, and the laws of physics are the same everywhere. When hydrogen and other gases collapse under gravitational attraction, you get the same kind of glowing ball of nuclear fusion, with variations only in size and somewhat in composition. You may get similar protoplanetary disks around them leading to the formation of planets, governed by identical physical processes. Even assuming that carbon-based life as we know it is the only viable form of life, and that earth-like conditions are a prerequisite for it, there are hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy alone around which such suitable planets could form.
In my view, the “really, really, big assumption” – one of fantastical improbability – is that of the hundreds of millions (at least) if not a billion or so of such suitable planets, earth is the only one on which life developed, because of some incredible unknown uniqueness. As we can observe, and as you just implied, we have yet to see anything else in the universe that is absolutely unique. The universe doesn’t seem to work that way. Black holes, neutron stars, pulsars … whatever; if one is found, there are always many others. It is thus with planets, with stars, with galaxies, and with everything in them and on them.
I’m imagining some intelligent civilization, say, a thousand light-years away, saying exactly the same thing! The presence of artificial radio waves may be a very transient phenomenon in the lifespan of a civilization, existing only from the time they are sophisticated enough to invent radio, to the time when, for one reason or another, they no longer need it. Regardless, I think it’s implausible to believe that we or anyone else would be able to detect an alien version of “I Love Lucy” at distances so vast that all we get is the occasional straggling photon, indistinguishable from background noise. I suppose there’s a reasonable question about why we’re not seeing powerful directed radio transmissions from advanced civilizations trying to make contact, but there are many plausible explanations for that.
I have no idea if they were ever peer reviewed, independently verified, etc. but Roger Weir’s article about supposed alien implants was a fairly interesting statement about the possibility of a more advanced life form. However, I don’t know what the counterarguments to his investigation are.
The counter arguments to his investigation is that he made the whole thing up. Other than his say so and a few random sciency looking photos he really doesn’t have any citations backing up his claims. If he has these things take them around to some legitimate independent scientists and get them to publish a paper in a real journal putting their reputations on the line that what they report is correct.
Some observations re the above, of which I only skimmed the first page quickly:
I note that all articles purporting to “prove” the existence of visiting extraterrestrials are always published on some obscure website that I’ve never heard of. This is something they have in common with websites disclosing all the details of top secret military anti-gravity projects.
The author uses – several times and with some disdain – the peculiar term “academic science”. The implication is that he now follows some other kind of science. He doesn’t give it a name, but I suggest referring to it as “bullshit science”, or just “bullshit” for short.
The author implies that skepticism about alien abductions is due to the prevalence of “paid skeptics” and a public beholden to “higher masters”. Presumably, the skeptics are being paid off by the aliens, and the rest of the public is under the influence of their mind control.
I would have more comments, but that’s as far as I could get, especially since I’m doing this for free. But if anyone knows how I could get on the aliens’ payroll, I’d be happy to be a professional paid skeptic, and ramp up my skepticism to prolific heights.
On these boards? :dubious:
I have no doubt there are other life forms in other planets and probably ones similar enough for us to recognize as life.
Do they visit here, seemingly with little or no impact or broad recognition of their visits? Very very very highly doubtful.
The fact that scientists reject the idea of aliens visiting our planet is not because we don’t take it seriously. It’s because we do. Serious consideration leads only to one place; to rejection of these ideas. It’s only frivolous consideration which can lead to accepting them.
You do know the purpose of Project Blue Book, don’t you? It wasn’t to look for evidence of aliens. It was to convince conspiracy theorists that there were aliens, to distract attention away from genuine secret military projects like Project Mogul (one of whose balloons was responsible for the “Roswell Incident”). So, yes, of course Project Blue Book is going to turn up “evidence” for aliens, because that was the whole goal.
Do you have a cite for this? I’m no expert but everything I’ve read has said that Project Blue Book was an actual investigation into reports of UFO’s. The official conclusion was that:
https://www.archives.gov/research/military/air-force/ufos.html
The Great Airship Mystery was certainly one of my sources, although I uncovered many contemporary newspaper articles that apparently weren’t available to him, thanks to the internet. However, his conclusion is the same as mine.
“Interesting” is word that can be applied to the investigation of why people want to believe, why they are so easily fooled, and why they don’t use basic reason to rule out their outlandish speculation.
The way most people use “interesting,” however, is that unexplained sightings must be interesting evidence of aliens. They are much like Charles Fort. If you read his books you see numerous statements that he is just presenting evidence and not drawing conclusions from them. You know, just asking questions. His process was to sit in libraries and copy out newspaper articles by the hundreds and present them as written. He passed no judgements on them, which in the end was equivalent to deeming all of them equally valid and therefore true. A thousand pages of hogwash later - he has an entire alternate astronomy and cosmology! - he concludes that we are property of higher beings. Well, maybe. Maybe not? If not, then why did I waste years of my time? So, yeah, absolutely. Fort is a wonderful example of the type we see online today who have put too much time and effort into their beliefs to allow them to be shaken.
Fort is “interesting.” But only in a psychiatric sense.
Some authoritative accounts from the greatest UFOlogist of our times, Woody Allen: 
All UFOs may not prove to be of extraterrestrial origin, but experts do agree that any glowing cigar-shaped aircraft capable of rising straight up at twelve thousand miles per second would require the kind of maintenance and sparkplugs available only on Pluto.
… The most frequently asked question about the UFOs is: If saucers come from outer space, why have their pilots not attempted to make contact with us, instead of hovering mysteriously over deserted areas? My own theory is that for creatures from another solar system “hovering” may be a socially acceptable mode of relating. It may, indeed, be pleasurable. I myself once hovered over an eighteen-year-old actress for six months and had the best time of my life. It should also be recalled that when we talk of “life” on other planets we are frequently referring to amino acids, which are never very gregarious, even at parties.
… One of the eeriest accounts occurred in August, 1975, to a man on Montauk Point, in Long Island: “I was in bed at my beach house, but could not sleep because of some fried chicken in the icebox that I felt entitled to. I waited till my wife dropped off, and tiptoed into the kitchen. I remember looking at the clock. It was precisely four-fifteen. I’m quite certain of this, because our kitchen clock has not worked in twenty-one years and is always that time. I also noticed that our dog, Judas, was acting funny. He was standing up on his hind legs and singing ‘I Enjoy Being a Girl.’ Suddenly the room turned bright orange. At first, I thought my wife had caught me eating between meals and set fire to the house. Then I looked out the window, where to my amazement I saw a gigantic cigar-shaped aircraft hovering just over the treetops in the yard and emitting an orange glow. I stood transfixed for what must have been several hours, though our clock still read four-fifteen, so it was difficult to tell. Finally, a large, mechanical claw extended from the aircraft and snatched the two pieces of chicken from my hand and quickly retreated. The machine then rose and, accelerating at great speed, vanished into the sky. When I reported the incident to the Air Force, they told me that what I had seen was a flock of birds. When I protested, Colonel Quincy Bascomb personally promised that the Air Force would return the two pieces of chicken. To this day, I have only received one piece.”
– Woody Allen, “The UFO Menace”, from “Side Effects”
Just mentioned that book since I’ve read it and haven’t read yours. But I’m glad you are giving more attention to the Airship Mystery.
I have all four of his books in the Ace editions, and read them all in high school. I wouldn’t recommend them, they are a bit of a slog. We can thank him for “Sinister Barrier” I suppose.
BTW it appears that the Fortean Society exists, if under a new name. I can’t say I’m surprised.
But think of how much time Fort could have saved if they had Google back then.
Alex, What are jokes that haven’t aged well?
This quote shows that Weir is a fantasist.
Can you provide evidence of a claim that was supported by a reasonable amount of evidence and further evidence that it was summarily dismissed by scientists? I mean specific cases, not generalizations.
If they did exist, it would be necessary to circumvent them.
I don’t think we’re being visited by aliens for a variety of reasons, but I have to quibble with your above statement. Extraterrestrial expansion just makes sense. On our home planet, there are any number of extinction level events that could happen. And even if we were to expand to relatively close Alpha Centauri, a supernova could still wipe both planets out, so we’d have impetus to expand even further. What kind of technology that would require is beyond me, but there is definitely a reason to expand extraterrestrially if possible.
Came in here to say this, basically. There simply hasn’t been any hard evidence, and exceptional claims require exceptional evidence. Anecdotal evidence, while it might seem compelling isn’t nearly going to reach that level. The thing is, I DO believe in UFO’s…I believe, hell, I know for a fact that there have been sightings of UFOs. Because, frankly, sometimes whatever it is that was seen remains unidentified. And it’s flying. And it’s an object. So, yeah, UFOs definitely happen.
There simply isn’t any evidence that they are space ships from another solar system/galaxy/alternative reality/time traveling space Elvis’s…