Unexplained.

[Maggot's Dad]

"afternoon all",

....well.....that first post has certainly led to a very interesting variation of views, which I suspect, will still continue to go on for some time.....

....... but for all of the points put forward, I would still have loved to have been there with Muskieman and have seen whatever it was that he saw on that occasion ....... something that still remains unexplained.

[Dave Burr]

The bigest problem with UFO's is that they are seen by humans and human beings are notoriously poor witnesses. Trust me, I've interviewed hundreds of 'witnesses' to accidents and the likes and the lack of detail, confusion and made up stuff that cones out can be alarming, not due to malice but because the human brain hates gaps and it tends to fill in the spaces and then give it a full and - to them- logical sequence.

I don't mind anybody believing in extra terrestrial visitors but those that believed in crop circles were given proof that they were false and ignored the truth claiming a conspiracy. Also, nowadays we all have cameras on our phones yet UFO sightings seem to have taken something of a back seat on the news along with ghosts, Big Foot and the Loch Ness Monster.

As humans there is also a tendency to believe that we are the ultimate in evolution, something I would argue against as our limited time on this planet will probably end due to our own short comings. Remember, had it not been for a big asteroid 60 odd million years ago we would have likely evolved in a very different manner and the bipedal human may never have evolved or, if it had there is a chance that it would not be the dominant creature on Earth. So why are the so-called aliens that are spotted usually bipeds? More due to our lack of imagination than fact.

[Julian]

Well, this is or has been the view of some, notably Carl Sagan, the SETI man. However, no one really has much if any idea of the probabilities of life emerging on a suitable planet, even if we can estimate how many suitable planets there actually are. We don't even know exactly how life came to be on our own.

It only makes sense to talk about existence of other life in our own galaxy, other galaxies being too remote to ever communicate with, leaving out the SF nonsense. Estimates for numbers of other civilisations in our galaxy have varied from millions down to a handful.

At present we are confronted by the Fermi Paradox: if there are so many others out there, why is there no evidence for them? SETI has been listening out for some years now without success. There may be some somewhere, but my hunch is there are very few, and possibly none.

No, we are not actually confonted by any Paradox - there are quite likely to be other intelligent civilisations out there, probably many.
The problem is the failure of most of the human race to get their head round the reason why we can't find any evidence - its the distance -it is just so far away from one star (and therefore one planetary sytem) to another.
Even radio waves are going to decades, or hundreds or thousands of years to reach other planets. We are going to have to wait an awful long time for the the chance of another civilsation receiving it and sending back a message which we then receive.
The speed of light is very roughly 10 million miles a minute. If you send out a signal that you wanted to reach just a few thousand stars (and therefore potentially habitated planets to receive) it would need to encompass at least a few hundred light years.
Just do the maths and you can see how far away planets are : eg those that are 100 light years away:
100 years x 365 days x 24 hours x 60 minutes x 10million = I believe that comes to somewhere around 500 trillion miles.
And then we actually talk about aliens coming to visit us in spaceships - its a long way to come just to be nosey

[Gary Bills]

Well, this is or has been the view of some, notably Carl Sagan, the SETI man. However, no one really has much if any idea of the probabilities of life emerging on a suitable planet, even if we can estimate how many suitable planets there actually are. We don't even know exactly how life came to be on our own.

It only makes sense to talk about existence of other life in our own galaxy, other galaxies being too remote to ever communicate with, leaving out the SF nonsense. Estimates for numbers of other civilisations in our galaxy have varied from millions down to a handful.

At present we are confronted by the Fermi Paradox: if there are so many others out there, why is there no evidence for them? SETI has been listening out for some years now without success. There may be some somewhere, but my hunch is there are very few, and possibly none.

I am inclined to agree, Bluedun, despite the thought making me feel lonely.

[Kevanf1]

Of course, an underlying theme here has been 'life as we know it'. What about life as we don't know it? It is entirely possible that there is life out there living in space that we simply cannot comprehend. It may feed on solar (star) energy or even the very dust itself in space. It could well be highly intelligent but have no interest in us or other beings. It could just drift along for thousands or even millions of years just contemplating its own existence and being happy with that. Then again it may not comprehend the emotion of being happy or sad. Beings from another planet may not have those emotions that we have. They may not have the same system of governance or tolerance or anything that makes us human. It has been pondered in this thread why these hypothetical beings have not been heard of via radio waves. What if they don't use radio waves? What if they are sensible enough to not pollute the ether with radio waves? They could easily be paranoid and fear something that is not even there. Or maybe there is something there that we should be in fear of?

Ok, this is now going into the realms of sci fi. What if there is a big federation of beings that rule space? It's possible that they know full well about us but are deliberately shielding the Earth from all of its transmissions because we are not ready to join them or are too aggressive or perhaps too greedy of natural resources or perhaps not worthwhile getting in touch with?

Maybe one day we will know. It would be nice for this to be within our lifetimes...

[Bluedun]

No, we are not actually confonted by any Paradox - there are quite likely to be other intelligent civilisations out there, probably many.
The problem is the failure of most of the human race to get their head round the reason why we can't find any evidence - its the distance -it is just so far away from one star (and therefore one planetary sytem) to another.
Even radio waves are going to decades, or hundreds or thousands of years to reach other planets. We are going to have to wait an awful long time for the the chance of another civilsation receiving it and sending back a message which we then receive.
The speed of light is very roughly 10 million miles a minute. If you send out a signal that you wanted to reach just a few thousand stars (and therefore potentially habitated planets to receive) it would need to encompass at least a few hundred light years.
Just do the maths and you can see how far away planets are : eg those that are 100 light years away:
100 years x 365 days x 24 hours x 60 minutes x 10million = I believe that comes to somewhere around 500 trillion miles.
And then we actually talk about aliens coming to visit us in spaceships - its a long way to come just to be nosey

Well the paradox exists if there are 'probably many' because many will have existed for however long needed for their broadcasts to reach us. Of course, the fewer there are, the less likely we will see any sign. At present there is no evidence they are numerous. There may be (or have been) some, but it is possible we will never know.