Unexplained.

[JimmyBobkin]

I am not a UFO follower. It doesn't quite make sense to me. BUT, during the summer of 1999 I saw a metallic orb, stationary in a cloudless, blue sky during my lunchbreak at work. When others saw me gawping at the sky, they too came to see what I was transfixed at. In total, four people saw it, then got bored and wondered of, claiming it was probably a weather balloon/parachutist/the moon etc. After about five minutes it ZOOMED off at an unemaginable speed. Military? Who knows?

[Gary Bills]

I am not a UFO follower. It doesn't quite make sense to me. BUT, during the summer of 1999 I saw a metallic orb, stationary in a cloudless, blue sky during my lunchbreak at work. When others saw me gawping at the sky, they too came to see what I was transfixed at. In total, four people saw it, then got bored and wondered of, claiming it was probably a weather balloon/parachutist/the moon etc. After about five minutes it ZOOMED off at an unemaginable speed. Military? Who knows?

Without going in details, my father used to work for a company that did work for the MOD, and he once saw a very similar thing: a metallic globe hovering in the sky, and he believed it to be military and terrestrial in origin...

[Snape]

I am not a UFO follower. It doesn't quite make sense to me. BUT, during the summer of 1999 I saw a metallic orb, stationary in a cloudless, blue sky during my lunchbreak at work. When others saw me gawping at the sky, they too came to see what I was transfixed at. In total, four people saw it, then got bored and wondered of, claiming it was probably a weather balloon/parachutist/the moon etc. After about five minutes it ZOOMED off at an unemaginable speed. Military? Who knows?

Without going in details, my father used to work for a company that did work for the MOD, and he once saw a very similar thing: a metallic globe hovering in the sky, and he believed it to be military and terrestrial in origin...

Rather like all the UFO sightings of triangular craft which turned stealth fighters and bombers when they were classified.

[Muskieman]

The thing that I saw pre dated stealth by quite a few years. Computer technology has only recently caught up with the aerodynamic requirements of stealth aircraft. They are inherently unstable. Northrop, who built the B2 bomber, experimented with similar configurations in the forties and fifties. They were all failures. The one that did get into the air crashed on its first flight after going into a spin, the pilot was killed.

[Gary Bills]

I am not a UFO follower. It doesn't quite make sense to me. BUT, during the summer of 1999 I saw a metallic orb, stationary in a cloudless, blue sky during my lunchbreak at work. When others saw me gawping at the sky, they too came to see what I was transfixed at. In total, four people saw it, then got bored and wondered of, claiming it was probably a weather balloon/parachutist/the moon etc. After about five minutes it ZOOMED off at an unemaginable speed. Military? Who knows?

Without going in details, my father used to work for a company that did work for the MOD, and he once saw a very similar thing: a metallic globe hovering in the sky, and he believed it to be military and terrestrial in origin...

Rather like all the UFO sightings of triangular craft which turned stealth fighters and bombers when they were classified.

Yes, probably an American "black" project called Aurora...

[St.John]

some candidates for a mistaken identity?

[Kevanf1]

It is of course possible that 'some' of the things we see are purely unpiloted craft. I won't say unmanned because they may not be 'men' as we know it. The craft could be thousands of years old that were sent off out into space to gather information for a now long dead race of creatures. Sounds far fetched? Look at the probes we (as a collective human race) have sent off out into the cold depths of space. They get their energy from what was then crude solar cells so they simply keep going. It is possible that in millions of years time one of those probes might just happen upon the atmosphere of an inhabited planet where somebody is looking up into the night sky and they see it. They stand there and wonder what it is.... then turn back round to continue with their night fishing session

[Muskieman]

At the end of the day, it all boils down to whether you believe in extra terrestrial life or not. Personally, I do. It could be dismissed as science fiction but science fiction has become fact. Take Jules Verne's 20,000 leagues under the sea. Far fetched at the time but a century later, the USS Nautilus goes around the world submerged. We don't know everything and the the things that defy logical explanation are what drive us to learn more and long may that continue.

[Snape]

At the end of the day, it all boils down to whether you believe in extra terrestrial life or not. Personally, I do. It could be dismissed as science fiction but science fiction has become fact. Take Jules Verne's 20,000 leagues under the sea. Far fetched at the time but a century later, the USS Nautilus goes around the world submerged. We don't know everything and the the things that defy logical explanation are what drive us to learn more and long may that continue.

I agree Muskieman. For there not to be intelligent life elsewhere in the galaxy let alone the universe is very improbable. The 'dust' in space has been shown to contain all the ingredients required for the type of life found on Earth and it seems that most stars are likely to have a planet in orbit in the zone where water is a liquid, making life as we know it probably dead common and if only a tiny fraction of it evolves to a level of intelligence capable of exploring space the galaxy should still be teeming with intelligent beings. This is based entirely on probability.
However, the probability that one or more of these lifeforms have journeyed to Earth from another solar system will be so small as to be virtually zero.

[Bluedun]

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.