Aliens
Empirical
Posts: 10,189 Forum Member
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I used to believe in all the supernatural stuff when I was a kid, aliens, Nessie, ghosts etc.
I slowly rationalised that it was most unlikley that any of these exist. It occurred to me that each report of a 'lone guy in the forest' or blurry picture simply made it less and less likely. I came to the conclusion UFOs were just secret military craft, hoxes and mis-identification.
So I stopped taking an interest, that was about 15 years ago.
However having recently spent some time at work reading articles on Wiki (as a sceptic btw) Ive realised things have moved on. Reports not really available at the time now include far more evidence from the former soviet and middle eat (such as the 1976 Iran incident).
Combined evidence gained from radar tracking, spy satellites, large numbers of officials make it hard to dismiss some events.
Its now the sceptics who are coming up with more and more tenuous explanations regarding these events.
Based on the evidence I find I cannot continue to dismiss all events. Whilst I believe most events are terrestrial in nature. There are some that, with the available evidence, cannot be anything other than non-terrestrial technology.
Im staring this discussion (I know this comes up a lot) because im asking.
Is belief in alien visitation still fringe or are more and more people also thinking the same as me?
Or in other words, have I assessed the evidence correctly or is it just a moon/landing.carrier bag conspiracy and ive joined the nutters?
Link to one of the main incidents that changed my mind
I slowly rationalised that it was most unlikley that any of these exist. It occurred to me that each report of a 'lone guy in the forest' or blurry picture simply made it less and less likely. I came to the conclusion UFOs were just secret military craft, hoxes and mis-identification.
So I stopped taking an interest, that was about 15 years ago.
However having recently spent some time at work reading articles on Wiki (as a sceptic btw) Ive realised things have moved on. Reports not really available at the time now include far more evidence from the former soviet and middle eat (such as the 1976 Iran incident).
Combined evidence gained from radar tracking, spy satellites, large numbers of officials make it hard to dismiss some events.
Its now the sceptics who are coming up with more and more tenuous explanations regarding these events.
Based on the evidence I find I cannot continue to dismiss all events. Whilst I believe most events are terrestrial in nature. There are some that, with the available evidence, cannot be anything other than non-terrestrial technology.
Im staring this discussion (I know this comes up a lot) because im asking.
Is belief in alien visitation still fringe or are more and more people also thinking the same as me?
Or in other words, have I assessed the evidence correctly or is it just a moon/landing.carrier bag conspiracy and ive joined the nutters?
Link to one of the main incidents that changed my mind
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Comments
That's a very fair viewpoint.
I think the logical argument nowadays is not that aliens don't exist, but that it is extremely unlikely that they have ever visited Earth.
You say that there are "some" events which you believe might be extraterrestrial. They very well might be, for me it's just about the probabilities.
The main question for me is, why would they visit Earth?
1) Spacetravel across such a large Universe would be incredibly expensive. Einstein said that the faster you go, the more energy you need. Even a wormhole would require vast, possibly infinite amounts of energy.
2) They don't have anything to gain from us, since they will of course be much much more advanced than us if they are capable of intergalactic travel.
3) If they are curious about a lesser species (humans) then there are probably closer worlds to them than Earth, so they can study those worlds instead.
So my conclusion is that alien contact is extremely unlikely, but certainly not impossible. Sorry for the wall of text by the way.
Slipstreem just summarised my entire post in 3 words.
But yeah, that's basically what I think.
That seems the most likely. However, since they would be aliens its really impossible for us to even estimate what might drive them without more information.
So personally I cant really factor that in to consideration because there is no way to know if motive would make aliens more or less likley to visit us.
If that makes sense.
LOL it's late but I think I get what you mean.
The part in bold is a very good point. For all we know, they may already have developed "cheap" space travel, and thus my other points become null and void.
The problem in this sort of discussion is that we are often bound by "human thinking" (of course). So my rationalisation may turn out to be completely incorrect, sort of like how the ancient Aztecs would be shocked if they saw modern technology. It would shatter their conventional thinking.
All I can really say at this point is that I damn well hope that aliens visit Earth before I die.
Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.
I did love the tale of aliens jumping out a spacecraft to dig up a park however!
"Pick your own Terf: Turn right at the next planet, 3rd from the star"
Sadly...I found that one to not be credible. Had I seen it I would have LMAO though.
The only real criticism I can give is that perhaps the Iranian authorities made a mistake, but on the other hand there are a large number of witness reports that all support each other.
I "personally" can't say I think it's alien without more explicit proof (I'm stubborn like that), but so far it does seem like a very strong case. I will be trying to read some more.
However a few like the above were not only more credible but I could find no other explanation, and of those many were not released at the time but have only because known because of FOIA and freedom policies as well as communications opening up now with the former USSR countries.
Which is what I mean when I say its move on alot since I last took an interest.
Also, a lot of the large landmasses don't have much monitoring equipment, such as the Siberian desert in Russia for example.
Further, if an alien ship were to crash, there is a 75% chance it would land in the ocean (since 3/4 of the Earth's surface is water). Which means that we will likely never find it, given the size of the ocean.
Here's a question for you. Do you think there may be a chance that one or more governments are covering something up here?
Ususally I don't go for conspiracy theories at all, but this one has at least a slight bit of logic behind it. Governments might want to keep it a secret to prevent rioting or large scale civil unrest, in the event that people start to panic. I definitely think it's plausible, IF alien contact has already occured.
Well there is a always a chance of anything!
But by current beliefs (if that's what your asking), again based on my personal assessments of evidence is that
-Roswell was not a UFO crash.
-The US Government are not in possession of crashed ships.
-Governments HAVE 'covered up' UFO events as seen by released files so that's a given. Its also reasonable top assume that any rather more interesting events that take place at secure locations are not released for a veraty of reasons.
-Some cover-ups were due to the 'UFOs' being experimental terrestrial craft.
-Released documents and general reactions suggest the governments are pretty much in the same boat as the populous: They dont really know what it is and many probably dont even believe that its extraterrestrial.
During the cold war both the US and Russia behaved in ways that *may* indicate they believed UFO visits to each be technology from the opposing side. That implies they knew nothing.
I know i skated round the whole conspiracy thing which is your real question but conspiracy can include a wide range.... but X-files style? No. I doubt it very very much. Especially over such a long periods of time