The UFO discussion thread
 

Because this forum just deserves one


So, i would like to start by giving this video for your critics

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yg_r8Krx4hA

Also... lets just set a few ground rules:

1- No Religion
2- TAKE IT EASY with the conspiracional flamming and trooling
3- Lets try no to put the Ego in front of the argument
4- Try to be open minded to other people's opinion on this, that in fact, is somewhat of a sci-fi theme for discussion...

Other than that, just state yoru opinions and sources!

I have seen the clip and I am afraid that it failed to convince me about the whole UFO equals Alien spacecraft. I don't claim that they are not covering something up, but take into account the vastness of the universe and the level of technology is required to travel even a fraction of the distance between two stars and the whole visitation by alien beings just seems highly improbable.
I have studied astrophysics and space flight so I know that an interstellar journey could happen but the energy and technology required to make said journey would have to be at least a thousand years more advanced then our own, if not more.
I personal would love there to be extra terrestrial craft flying though our skys and general 'Look there are aliens'. I however must sit in the 'No proof, no aliens on Earth' camp.

I think that If there were aliens, there would be only one reason that they'd come here. To farm us for slave labor. Or to kill us and use our planet.

If it was a truly advanced and non warlike society, they'd have (Good GOD I hate brining this up) some kind of "prime directive" like in star trek. They'd leave us alone until we had the ability to travel to them.

I mean really, we have to be like, the south of the galaxy. They peobably drive through our system on their way to somewhere nicer.

I'll agree to this wholeheartedly, honestly. Since, well, we can't prove it enough to really debate anything here. I'll not deny the fact that there is another race of intelligent/semi intelligent beings. Earth's one in a quadrillion? It's really hard to believe that we're the only ones around, just by pure statistics from my own view. (Diving anything past that might lead to religious talk, so yeah, stopping)

The problem with that clip was...it was just this guy I've never seen before was like, "Oh yeah, I've worked on dozens of top secret projects for dozens of years, so I know what I'm talking about. The problem with UFO debunkers is the fact that they lack evidence, whereas the pro-Alien folk know what they're talking about. I mean it's obvious there are aliens and their spacecraft on Earth, it's so obvious, here's a piece of paper that's completely blanked out!"

Now don't get me wrong, as an avid sci-fi geek, this kind of thing intrigues me greatly. I rarely bother myself with conspiracy theories and such, though, it's more like an occasional thing to look into for an hour or two twice a year. But every time I watch a video like this, or some show on TV that bombard me with pictures of penlights floating around on the background of real footage, or dramatizations of "what really happened" with no evidence that anything actually happened, or, actually this is my favorite, interviews with crazy people that require medication.

Seriously, when some 400lb widow from Texas is telling the camera a 9 foot tall lizard alien teleported into her bedroom at 3am, stood there and did nothing, then teleported away, there are problems with her neurons. Big problems.

I imagine all governments probably keep secrets. I keep secrets, you keep secrets, my neighbours keep secrets. Extrapolate that, I imagine organizations and states keep secrets too. Going from that to "aliens crashed, we have their bodies and spacecraft" is conjecture. Right out of the psychology textbook, memories are not objective. If I show you a picture of a blue van and TELL you it's a white van, then come back to you in two weeks and ask you what colour the van was, 99.9% of the time you'll say it was a white van.

While I LOVE to fantasize about the presence of aliens around our solar system, I think it's just a hype thing until I see a smidget of evidence to the contrary. I think all the theorists want there to be aliens, so they make it so, regardless of evidence or lack thereof. Maybe all the crazy "technology" is human technology? Where was the jump to alien made? Is it completely out of the realm of imagination to think a scientist working for the government, perhaps a top secret agency, actually made a huge breakthrough? Not all breakthroughs need be public, especially if people keep secrets.

But I imagine all the UFO sightings, videos, and pictures we see are fakes. As an example, take a look at some of the very first UFO pictures, even the most convincing ones ever. Now think about the time period they came from. 1940's and 1950's, then look at the picture, and tell me honestly that isn't a model with a 1940's and 1950's "flare." Now look at a more modern close-up. It's a nice sleek vessel with all kinds of pretty lights. It looks almost...modern. I guess the aliens just change their UFOs to suit our ability to build UFO models and imprint them on picture backgrounds. It's not like video editting can't be done realistically. We could add those cheap light effects years ago (see: Star Wars). Just look at what we can do with computers in the present (see: The Matrix trilogy, Lord of the Rings, Superman Returns, etc).

Just try not to mention it at all, it just leads to problems.

As far as earth being the only planet to support life, there was an equation performed that basically in an infinite amount of space, there is only a finite number of planets, and in these planets, there is a finite number of them capable of supporting life. It basically steps from there into the probablity that the specific conditions for life to occour. It steps from about ten million, to one million, to about 100,000.
So there are only about 100000 planets capable of supporting life.
That is the low end estimate.

I think you're talking about the Drake equation. It's not at all reliable, because there's about one...or two...variables in the equation out of 7 or 8 that we have an estimate of. The rest is PURE conjecture. Actually, we don't necessarily even know any of the variables. We THINK we know the number of stars in the galaxy, though that changes (the more common occurrence of brown dwarf stars as our telescopes and techniques become more precise), and we might be able to guess the number of planets per solar system (nope, not really...at best we've found several large gas giants in other solar systems, our techniques aren't up to par yet). That and the fact that there isn't actually a solid definition for what a "planet" is...

as far as i can say, its nto abotu how many planets are there... but how many Suns...

Im not quite sure that any other lifeform would fly to a planet SO close to its sun like Eart is for no good reason unless they had a sun if their own...

So... can Earth be the only planet with water?
Can earth be the only planet with Oxygen?

we all know that it only takes one molecule of a amoeba or something even smaller to create life... it "just" takes a bizillion years for it to happen... so... yeah... life can exist out there...

But who's to say that this "other planet" isnt just as developed as we are? Wondering the same... it can happen!

If there are secrets? Maybe... maybe someone foudn a new Type of rock or metal or a new element or anything "new" to that effect... they wont say that they have it untill they know everything they can about it...

But really... all it takes is one official NSA file with the words "Substance of unknow origin and composition" for the dumb masses here to go nuts... maybe its just a new type of Raw Iron, that came from space and which has changed over time with the sun's radiation, atmospheric pressure, etc etc etc... of another planet... who knows? But if such information came out 90% of "everybody" would scream "4L13N C0NP1R4C3Y!!one1!" ... so yeah... good thing there are some secrets....

The fact of the matter is, if a highly advanced, aggressive ailen society actually existed anywhere in this universe, we'd probably be dead.

Which means, more likely than not, there is either A: no extraterristrial life out there at all, B: extraterristrial life that just isn't highly advanced (like us, maybe, or like insects, or like bacteria), C: highly advanced extraterristrial life that happens to be relatively benevolent.

In regards to UFO sightings, I tend to believe what Dan Brown suggested in his novel Deception Point. The U.S. air force has at least one top-secret project regarding highly advanced aerospace technology. When folks catch a glimpse of it, it might be mistaken for a UFO. For the U.S. military, it's a great opportunity; by allowing the UFO activists to keep talking about their "alien sightings" the gov't diverts our attention from what's actually going on.

Conspiratorial? Maybe, but I find it easier to believe than ailens. And it's now well-known that quite a few UFO sightings back several decades ago actually involved early prototypes of U.S. stealth bomber aircraft. For that matter I don't even think the U.S. military is necessarily developing anything 'doomsday', they're just covering it for the same reason any military would try to hide information about its latest projects from the spotlight.

Partially true, but you're defining far too much with one sentence.

If there was a highly advanced aggressive alien society, then hell yes we'd be dead. If they really were conquering the puny Earthlings like in every sci-fi book, then of course we'd be dead. Classifying everything besides aggressive advanced aliens into three set tiers is just putting too much into defined structure, since we still don't even know anything.

Let's give examples - What if they don't even really care? What if the alien society dropped in on Earth and the moon, saw that we were cheering for our relatively puny victory in travel, and said, "Eh, fuck them." What if they're not even in our solar system or galaxy, and therefore aren't advanced enough to even get close to us?

Which I guess leads to what I believe in - I think that there is something out there, and either it's nonagressive and the government's covering it up, or we haven't reached it yet since our need of oxygen makes it difficult.

As for sightings? I think that far too many sightings consist of some redneck out near Area 51 picking up his video tape and throwing his tin-foil frisbee, then acting all scared.

In related notes, I actually do believe in Mothmen.