What do you think about UFO discussions on DU?

When the silly Texas UFO story broke I found a lot of DUers seemed almost militant believers that UFOs are alien spacecraft. Being a skeptic myself and never seeing any evidence that UFOs are anything other than unidentified natural or manmade objects, I was a bit bemused by my fellow progressives.
I wonder what you all here on the Science Forum think about all this.

It's possible that there are advanced civilizations way beyond our own who have the ability to traverse vast distances in relatively short amounts of time. It's also possible that such civilizations could be monitoring our planet.

Do I find this likely? Not really. Even if there are such civilizations, which given the vastness of the universe I'd have to say probably exist, I find it highly unlikely that they'd be poking around our corner of the galaxy. Where is the proof? All we have are a bunch of conspiracy theorists who insist that governments around the world are working together to conceal "the truth".

"All we have are a bunch of conspiracy theorists who insist that governments around the world are working together to conceal "the truth"."

If the government did not want to perpetuate the myth that some UFOs may be of extraterrestrial origin, they would not proffer ridiculous explanations in efforts to explain UFOs (terrestrial or otherwise) away. Case in point, in 1997 the government stated that the people at Roswell site in 1947, who said they saw bodies in the wreckage of an unknown craft, really saw crash test dummies. When it was pointed out in the press conference that crash dummies were not used until some years later, it was the government's stated position that the discrepancy was the result of "time compression".

If you can explain to me what time compression is, and that that is a rational argument, I will be happy to concede that those who believe the government is not coming clean on the subject have no cogent grounds for their suspicions.

Who better to do the initial boring, tedious, unpaid field work than true believers? Even scientific pursuits, like string theory, are pioneered by "evangelists" of one sort or another.

Their work will be closely scrutinized anyway. And if they do discover something interesting, so much the better.

--p!

"Believers", or witnesses, for the most part don't investigate, they witness, and then researchers question them. I doubt you'll find a "true believer" among any of the more serious UFO researchers - the ones you don't hear much about. They are skeptical, and painstaking in their work, and wish there was better structure in their field-- one that would serve as a foundation for review. They have their work cut out for them.

But what I was speaking to was that researchers who question the origin of UFOs and the government's role in obfuscating the facts, are not just a bunch of whackos who have nothing better to do than sit around and drum up empty conspiracy theories for fun and profit. There are facts that support their assumptions that the government is not being truthful.

Are you even aware what the crash wreckage at Roswell was? Why would they not try to conceal it?

And the government has given 4 different excuses, not counting "time compression," to try to explain it away, but I was responding to post #1 that says:

"Where is the proof? All we have are a bunch of conspiracy theorists who insist that governments around the world are working together to conceal "the truth"."


The statement above is offensive. People who are interested in finding out the truth about UFOs are typically generalized and marginalized in this way. To call someone a conspiracy theorist is tantamount to calling them a nut job. To support the idea that people who are interested in UFOs are nut jobs, the poster states that 'they insist that governments around the world are working to conceal "the truth".'

I was making the point that it is rational for people to mistrust what the government has to say about UFOs. I then illustrated that with the government's ridiculous "Time Compression" explanation from the 1997 Roswell press conference.

Why not just focus on the real explanation? The crash debris at Roswell was from a top-secret balloon-based sensor suite that was designed to detect Soviet atmospheric nuclear tests. in 1947, of COURSE the government wasn't going to own up to that. And who gives a rat's rump what they said about it in 1997? I wouldn't be surprised if they spewed out all that "time compression" silliness just to screw with you, as payback for continuing to waste their time on this BS. And as far as other UFO incidents, some of them may very well be sightings of secret US military aircraft, in which case I WANT the government to lie about it. The bottom line is that you have absolutely no affirmative evidence that any of these things are extraterrestrial spacecraft...zip..zero...nada. And that's after thousands of UFO believers have been sniffing around these cases for more than 60 years. All you have is suspicions and conspiracy mongering. If you can't do better than that after all this time and all this effort, don't whine when you're treated scornfully and dismissively.

If you continue to make charges of a government conspiracy without hard evidence (and no, suspicions and government secrecy or incompetence are NOT evidence), and especially if you claim (as many UFO believers do) that the lack of evidence is just further proof of a conspiracy, then do expect to have you grip on reality questioned. Habeus Corpi.

The militancy goes in both directions. But that's more of an amusement than anything serious.

My own grounding in science taught me to shut up, observe, and take notes. True believers and ultra-skeptics do not do that. On the other hand, people like MUFON actually DO take notes. And it's completely appropriate to strongly question those data, too.

So what do *I* believe? I believe nothing. I wouldn't bet on the existence of LGMs, but if one of them bit me on the ass, I like to think that I wouldn't be too surprised.

--p!

ET's, or LGM's as you put it, almost certainly exist. Even if you assume that life on this planet arose under very special circumstances, and the chances of it happening elsewhere are remote, I'd say that given the extreme vastness of the universe - and trillions of star systems in the universe - that there stands a good chance that intelligent life has arisen elsewhere.

Now do I believe that such beings would bother traveling hundreds, thousands, or millions of light-years to examine Earth? Even if they have the technology to cover such distances, why would we assume that we're so special to warrant that kind of attention?

After all, what is life but a chemical process?

Consider all the happy accidents that could happen over billions of years, on trillions of planets under just as many different circumstances and with all the same, basic elements. It would be the height of ignorance to believe otherwise.

Even if only one-millionth of planets in the universe have developed life, and if only one-millionth of those evolve into complex life forms, and if only one-millionth of those evolve into intelligent life forms comparable to humans, then there would still be plenty of planets in the universe that would fit that description.

They'd be rather spread out - not exactly within 'shouting distance' of each other, and in all likelihood would never learn of each other's existences.

You only have to look at our current foreign policy to see that.

BTW, yesterday I learned that our radio and television signals dissipate to static and background hum after only one or two light years travel. It took a real load off my shoulders.

if they have the tech to build HUGE spaceships, and can travel vast distances, then they have the tech to terraform much closer planets rather easily.

So why fly and invest in invading planets (when they could lose everything) when they could use their tech simply to terraform planets like Mars, at little risk to themselves and with the same rewards?

The aliens were likened to an ever-expanding, ever-growing horde of locusts. They'd already (much like U.S.) used up those resources close to home and were expanding outward to untouched areas. The last thing they were interested in was expending energy to terraform other planets to settle on - they only required raw materials to continue their expansion.

They were, obviously, an entire race of corporate Republicans.

Some scientists and philosophers posit that intelligence is special and specific to humans. This is sometimes called the Anthropic theory because Barrow and Tipler first wrote about it in detail, though it is not their idea alone.

The multiple-source theory is the mainstream theory: that there are many intelligent life forms in the universe.

The Pigwidgeon theory (I'm sure it has a different, real name) is that there are many different kinds of intelligence in the universe, most of them probably widely divergent, but falling into different kinds of groups -- e.g., DNA-coded animals, metallic crystalline lattices, intelligent space clouds, you name it.

The universe itself is thought to be intelligent, though most proponents of that idea embrace it for mystical reasons, as a substitute for God. I think it's possible only because our understanding of intelligence is currently so limited. But, no, I strongly oppose the corrupt grotesquery that is "Intelligent Design" -- though I'll take an honest-but-religious William Paley over a vulgar political pimp like Bill Dembski any day.

--p!

A hundred years ago, in this neck of the woods, a trip from, say, Louisburg to Raleigh (40 miles) would be a several day affair, in all probablility. It would be something to be anticipated, planned for, scheduled out. Today, it's less than an hour's drive down Hwy 1.

If their technology, way beyond anything we have, can cross the galaxy the way we cross the county, why wouldn't they?

For sake of argument, let's just assume that a civilization that's a 1000 light-years from us has the ability to travel faster-than-light, and can cross such distances instantly. What would attract them to our solar system? We've only been broadcasting radio signals into space for about a hundred years. Those signals wouldn't have reached that civilization yet, so what reason would they have to even be looking in our direction?

It's possible that there could be alien civilizations undergoing routine exploration throughout the galaxy, and they could have stumbled upon us that way. But then again, there really isn't very much proof to support this, so it's just wild speculation.

for life (and I know there are arguments for other, non-carbon, water based life forms) a civilization with the capacity for such travel would undoubtedly have the capacity for identifying earth-type planets across great distances - we're getting close to that capacity ourselves and we've never even gotten out of our solar system. We have discovered that there are many planetary systems out there, and have so far failed to identify planets in those systems that are appropriately sized and at an appropriate distace from their suns. It may be that such planets are rare enough to warrant personal visits. They wouldn't have to know we're here before starting out.

Of course it's equally possible that what would draw them is Jupiter and Saturn, and they don't even recognise earth as being a life-bearing planet - too small, covered with corrosive oxygen.

if they could travel instantly, then it would be surprising that they werent here. Our mid-sized sun would be a real giveaway as a potential harbinger of life. Traveling instantly would mean they could go to all of the stars along the main spectrum that were stable and metal rich in a fairly short amount of time.

Having said all of that, doubt that its even possible to travel any significant distance "instantly"

I have been a part of the skeptics movement for over 25 years. It is grounded in rational thought and critical thinking. If there is any guiding principle its that extrodinary claims require extrodinary evidence. Unless you think the likes of Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov are militant and closed minded.

The discussion on GD can get a bit pedantic. People can't get past the idea that if something is remotely possible then it must be probable and you'd be a fool to doubt it.
I think the discussion here has gotten to the core of the matter. The possibility of life and even intelligent life on other planets is a completely different subject than whether we have been visited by aliens.
That UFO proponents think that to deny that UFOs are alien spacecraft somehow means you don't believe there could be life on other planets is a failure of logic.

I just found it funny that someone who wrote ...
> I have been a part of the skeptics movement for over 25 years.
> It is grounded in rational thought and critical thinking.
... is the only one on this thread that talked to himself in
consecutive posts!
:rofl:

I meant for the second post to be at the end of the thread as a reply to everyone (it's a nice comment) not as a reply to myself.
I said the movement was based on rational thought, not that I'm always that good with the thinking thing.:D

is just one of a few code words that some folks like to use for people who they think aren't "open-minded" enough. It's a put-down, basically. Like it's OK to be skeptical... but only to a point. Then you're just being too insistent on things like evidence and reason, ya know. :eyes:

Sometimes, we learn from discussions.

(during a lecture here in Portland, OR) that if there were other intelligent species who had expended the time and energy it would take to get from there to here, they would, by necessity, have to arrive as conquerors. Drained of resources from a mind-numbingly long journey, they would have to take whatever they could get their little green hands on, and their advanced technological state would support their advance to the alpha species.

I find it considerably more likely that either UFOs are coming from right here on earth (human-made or otherwise) or they are traveling in some sort of non-local manner, such as dimensional shifting, time travel, etc.

I also find the idea that the US government is capable of successfully hiding the "UFO Truth" . . . LUDICROUS. This country's best-kept secrets . . . aren't. I'm not so certain about possible extranational entities like the Carlyle Group and other James-Bond-Villain types.

But the reporters on this story are all more incredulous at the government's attempted explanation of this than they are of the witnesses. The witnesses match each other and the government, well, can anyone think "weapons of mass destruction"? That is about how much credibility the government has here. They would have been better off keeping their collective mouths shut.

You'll just have to read this Dallas Morning News article--

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/stories/012408dntexufo.4f269ff6.html

or doing some other "high security" stuff, they aren't going to tell the truth about it. Much more likely than the govt covering up seeing a UFO.

Unfortunately a lot of the people who are adamant that they are space craft are the ones that are suspicious of anyone in the govt. So if a government based scientist gives a rational explanation..it gets thrown out as "govrenment conspiracy". Its kind of like jury nullification. Given enough distrust of a source, no matter how accurate their observations..there are always gonna be people who won't believe it.
Come on, you have people that dispite many many eyewitness acounts /hard evidence to still insist that no plane hit either the pentagon or the WTC.
I recently remember pictures of what looked like UFO drones of some sort causing quite a commotion. Turns out they were special effects gadgets made and flown remotely as a gag...
I'm of the Carl Sagan school of this..Its very likely that there is life and probably extraterrestrial life elsewhere in the universe. However the odds of them actually "visiting" us are vanishingly small.

Who could think such a thing?

My point was not that UFOs were extraterrestrial, it was that the stupid explanations by the government are sure throwing more people into that camp.

Most UFOs have rational explanations, but that doesn't mean that the government should try to force one on a sighting that doesn't have one. It's stupid. People just don't buy it.

But you know, actually not as much as people think. Alot of misdirection. ANd a lot of times telling a truth that seems outrageous enough to make people suspicious of it works too.
Personally I think the military engages in that quite a bit. BUt there are a lot of very good scientific evidence, that is a little too technical for most lay people understand that explains a lot of the UFO phenomena. Is there some unexplained stuff, sure. But its unhealthy to believe that EVERYTHING the govt says is a lie just as to believe EVERYTHING they say is the truth.
Besides my BIL was in the navy for years and from what he says, and its pretty easy for the military to make a mistake like that...One hand does not always know what the other one is doing

than it is to discuss religion.