UFOs & Extraterrestrial Life

GarryB wrote:
Another factor is that it is rather easy to fake,

The bulk of witnesses are credible--pilots, businessmen, policemen, professors, even astronauts. And the phenomenon isn't based just on testimony. There have been landing traces, radar sightings etc.

and there are plenty of attention seekers out there…

On the other hand, many witnesses are reluctant to come forward because of fear of ridicule.

perhaps even people who are lonely who suddenly get all this attention because they mentioned they saw lights in the sky... I mean it is getting much harder now to make your camera create video out of focus, but the people taking movies and photos of things seem to be able to manage it…

Some clear photos are known.

I want to believe of actual alien visitations, and not mere probability of it . But there is always better explanations for this alien story. I said before that if  we reject the cases that are misinformation , misidentificatiins , fabrications , hallucinations , then  this leaves about one per cent  of cases that are truly unexplained .

If we reject ALL witness testimony as unreliable. As we should. Since people lie. Then Radar evidence as unreliable. Since can give false detection. Or be spoofed. And  trace evidence that can have alternate explanations. Apart from few cases.

Then there is virtually nothing left to lead us to this conclusion, of actual alien visitations. Now or in the past.

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/30609/60-people-cant-go-10-minutes-without-lying

And :


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_jamming_and_deception

Crop circles were evidence at one time... irrefutable proof of alien spacecraft... often with burn marks on the ground until some of the people making them showed how they did it...

I really would like to believe there are aliens among us, but why would I trust them when I don't trust most of our own governments as far as I could throw them?

Note I don't "like" the above post, but sadly I agree with it... people are liars.

The interesting thing for me about the UFO subject is the physics of space travel. The speed of light is the limit and one would need to have black hole like
energies to warp space time to cheat on this limit. According to GR it is possible to travel faster than the speed of light if the spacecraft sits in a moving
domain of space-time. As seen from the Painleve-Gulstrand stationary metric solution, space-time shells can collapse onto a point mass at free fall speeds
which eventually exceed the speed of light creating a black hole zone inside some radius. On each of these shells, there is a hard speed of light limit on motion.
Carrying this over to a "warp bubble" which is created by a spacecraft one can plow through the ambient space-time like the Shkval torpedo cleaves the
water and rides a gas bubble. The analogy is that the rules of the medium are being changed.

But this is all fantasy at the current time. It looks like no alien civilization has managed to come up with such warp engineering. Given the energies involved
it is not that surprising.

GarryB wrote:Crop circles were evidence at one time... irrefutable proof of alien spacecraft…

Nobody considered crop circles "irrefutable proof" of alien visitation. Only in a few cases have witnesses reported strange craft making them.

often with burn marks on the ground until some of the people making them showed how they did it...

As the late Stan Friedman pointed out, there are hoaxes in all fields. Just because some crop circles are hoaxes doesn't mean they all are.

nomadski wrote:I want to believe of actual alien visitations, and not mere probability of it . But there is always better explanations for this alien story.

No, certainly not always. There are many cases for which no satisfactory prosaic explanation is known, even after decades of investigation. Socorro is an example.

If we reject ALL witness testimony as unreliable. As we should. Since people lie.

I don't think pilots, policemen, professors and other highly credible people would risk ruining their careers by hoaxing UFO stories. Often witnesses are reluctant to come forward.

kvs wrote:But this is all fantasy at the current time.   It looks like no alien civilization has managed to come up with such warp engineering. 

If you mean there is no evidence of ET here, legions of witnesses and investigators would beg to differ. Given thousands of sightings by credible witnesses of strange craft and entities all over the world, and some physical evidence, the problem must be with our current understanding of physics.

".... This is the best-documented case on record, and still we have been unable, in spite of thorough investigation, to find the vehicle or other stimulus that scared Zamora to the point of panic."[29].. "

The vehicle that spooked Zamora, and made him stop the chase on highway, was most probably the vehicle he was chasing. He was in fear for his life, thinking that the occupants would open fire. He then abandoned the chase and drove into desert. But what excuse to give ?  Ah.... an alien has landed excuse !  And some jumped on the bandwagon for TV ratings or personal fame. Fellow officers saved his job, by supporting him. Recent cases ( many ) also of police terminating a chase or investigation. Because of UFO had  " disabled" vehicle.............


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonnie_Zamora_incident

nomadski wrote:The vehicle that spooked Zamora, and made him stop the chase on highway, was most probably the vehicle he was chasing. He was in fear for his life, thinking that the occupants would open fire.

Zamora was chasing a speeding vehicle. How would he know the occupant(s) were armed? The only problem was they were going too fast. Or, if he didn't have the guts to face some personal danger what the heck was he doing in the PD?

He then abandoned the chase and drove into desert. But what excuse to give ?  Ah.... an alien has landed excuse !

He heard the sound of an explosion and considered that more important than a speeder. He thought a dynamite shack had blown up, so went to investigate, and saw the strange object with humanoids. This sort of occurrence is not at all unusual. As The Alien Grand Design notes, the phenomenon often makes some kind of sound to attract the attention of a witness and get him to see some spectacle.

 And some jumped on the bandwagon for TV ratings or personal fame. Fellow officers saved his job, by supporting him.

An outright fabrication is utterly absurd. There were landing traces, thoroughly investigated. Not so long ago there was a nonsensical claim about (unnamed and unidentified) college students hoaxing them but I don't recall anybody in KDR's blog believing that or saying Zamora did it. Even if he was derelict in his duty and needed an excuse it would've been infinitely better or less risky to make up some story which did not involve ETs…People might think he's crazy--just as bad as cowardly if not worse.

Recent cases ( many ) also of police terminating a chase or investigation. Because of UFO had  " disabled" vehicle.............

In fact civilians have had this experience see e.g. 1973 The Year of the Humanoids.

You are more uptodate with cases. But I only refer to those I saw on TV.  About civilian cases, where vehicles were affected. I can think of following cases. You probably know them by name.

Case 1.  Courting couple pull up along the verge. Or so they say. Report object approaching. Lifts car into air and drops car unto verge. Damaging kerb. If we edit out the " object lifting and dropping car". As unreliable witness testimony. The only remaining  facts are :  1 - courting couple and 2- damage to car and kerbside. But how do you explain that you lost control of moving vehicle?  Since you were a good driver and out for a modest night out?  Were not supposed to stop, and had to keep both hands on the wheel.

Case 2. Lorry driver reports lights approaching, finds himself inside giant space ship. Only later to wake up at station. Having lost several hours in time. The truck mile indicator, shows journey took far shorter, than actual distance travelled. His pistol had been fired without explanation. This one is an obvious fabrication by driver, who got into funny business, a crime or shoot out. Tried to cover tracks by messing with mile indicator. Made a mess of it. Stole the records later.

Case 3. Women driving car at night. Hits invisible object. Dents car. The car shows impact with soft object. This explained away as magic melting of car body. Reality : woman hits pedestrian or animal, but soft body leaves no traces or blood on car. Woman does not own up to hitting and probably killing someone on the Road.

nomadski wrote:You are more uptodate with cases. But I only refer to those I saw on TV.  About civilian cases, where vehicles were affected. I can think of following cases. You probably know them by name.

Over the years I've read about more cases than I can remember.

Case 1.  Courting couple pull up along the verge. Or so they say. Report object approaching. Lifts car into air and drops car unto verge. Damaging kerb. If we edit out the " object lifting and dropping car". As unreliable witness testimony. The only remaining  facts are :  1 - courting couple and 2- damage to car and kerbside. But how do you explain that you lost control of moving vehicle?  Since you were a good driver and out for a modest night out?  Were not supposed to stop, and had to keep both hands on the wheel.

Unless they confessed to a hoax I wouldn't dismiss this one. The courting couple probably stopped on some secluded stretch of road so they could "make out" in privacy. There have been all kinds of reports of strange things done by the phenomenon.

Case 2. Lorry driver reports lights approaching, finds himself inside giant space ship. Only later to wake up at station. Having lost several hours in time. The truck mile indicator, shows journey took far shorter, than actual distance travelled. His pistol had been fired without explanation. This one is an obvious fabrication by driver, who got into funny business, a crime or shoot out. Tried to cover tracks by messing with mile indicator. Made a mess of it. Stole the records later.

Don't you think he'd have a better chance of being believed if he made up some less bizarre story? Actually scores of strange craft have messed around  with vehicles. Since the time of the Hills, there have been many reports of motorists being abducted. As The Alien Grand Design notes, the phenomenon deliberately varies the details of cases. Most often a driver is taken but sometimes the whole vehicle. It's possible, btw, the guy shot at a humanoid who pulled him out of the truck to examine him. A cop was mysteriously unable to draw his pistol in similar circumstances but the truck driver may have been able to (even if he like most abductees had no conscious memory of what happened inside a craft). There have been reports of people shooting at humanoids and hitting them. The Alien Grand Design has several such cases.

Case 3. Women driving car at night. Hits invisible object. Dents car. The car shows impact with soft object. This explained away as magic melting of car body. Reality : woman hits pedestrian or animal, but soft body leaves no traces or blood on car. Woman does not own up to hitting and probably killing someone on the Road.

Here I incline toward the skeptical view. I don't think ET was involved since "an invisible object" provides no grounds for it specifically. Whereas UFO activity generally appears intended to convince people ET is here.

That's the point. It is no longer outlandish or bizzare to refer to aliens. People are not locked up in loony bin. They are somewhat believed. The alien phenomenon reflects similar beliefs previously in ghosts. People believed these as tangible and factual realities. Instead of  a product of psychology.

And why indeed not come up with alternative more Earthly excuses?  Because a material Earthly excuse, can potentially be disproved. But an alien visitor, can never be disproved. They are simply out of this world. No possible evidence can be found, to disprove the story. And one size fits all. It is a very flexible story, that can " account" for lost time and absent people and strange injuries........

https://youtu.be/SatgtjVX4PY


Now it seems that the phosphine gas on Venus, has a non-biogenic explanation. One that does not require us to explain, how a living organism, could survive  such harsh environment. But requires us to explain, the larger quantities found.

https://summit.news/2020/09/15/video-dozens-of-people-in-new-jersey-stop-their-cars-mistake-blimp-for-a-ufo/

Most UFO sightings are from idiots and are worth nothing. This includes cases such as the above where there is not enough
IQ to distinguish an advertising blimp from a "UFO". Another example is to call ball lightning plasma spheres UFOs. There
is only the "unidentified" part and no association with aliens whatsoever.

kvs wrote:Most UFO sightings are from idiots and are worth nothing.

There are misidentifications by inexperienced observers but many unexplained (i.e. in prosaic terms) cases are based on the testimony of highly credible witnesses--policemen, pilots, professors, businessmen even astronauts.

nomadski wrote:That's the point. It is no longer outlandish or bizzare to refer to aliens. People are not locked up in loony bin. They are somewhat believed.

Yes but has anyone invoked ET in a court of law? Without supporting evidence I doubt it would be a valid defense...

And why indeed not come up with alternative more Earthly excuses?  Because a material Earthly excuse, can potentially be disproved. But an alien visitor, can never be disproved. They are simply out of this world. No possible evidence can be found, to disprove the story.

In fact investigators look for evidence to verify UFO reports, and can spot hoaxes. Many reports involve landing traces or marks that are hard to explain, and such evidence may be expected if ET came down to take someone. Also, if someone claims a UFO took him at this or that place investigators can search for corroborating testimony from other witnesses. A well-known abduction in '73 had such supporting testimony. In cases where it is expected--like a busy road--lack of it can sink a case, or severely diminish its credibility.

I think the reason, ET has not been used as defence in court of law, is that it will not prove anything. And they know it. ET defence is used in cases, that are not judicial in nature. May refer to accidents or misdemeanour. Or injury to property or self. Or if there is a victim, then they have not yet come forward with complaint. Because nature of event embarrassing.

And I do think that the position or rank of witness gives more authority. But some authorities think that UFO story is a white lie. It hurts no one. That it gets people interested to ask questions. Maybe they are right. It sure gets my interest still. How else do you get people to send another probe to Mars?  And keep your job? Ah.... The face on Mars...... The gas on Venus.....

And yes there are some cases, where there are multiple witnesses. Marks on the ground. Radar. They are more difficult to explain. But they may have more to do with other less understood events. Than just ET, visiting. BTW, what is 73, case with supporting testimony ?

nomadski wrote:I think the reason, ET has not been used as defence in court of law, is that it will not prove anything.

If the case for ET involvement is good, because there is no prosaic explanation for certain evidence, that may cause someone to be exonerated (i.e. prove his innocence). The problem is, while acceptance of the reality of ET is increasing, there is still no official recognition of this reality. Without that, ET can't be used in a court of law.

And I do think that the position or rank of witness gives more authority. But some authorities think that UFO story is a white lie. It hurts no one. That it gets people interested to ask questions. Maybe they are right. It sure gets my interest still. How else do you get people to send another probe to Mars?  And keep your job? Ah.... The face on Mars...... The gas on Venus…..

I don't think UFO reports motivate space spending. Many scientists aren't enthusiastic about UFOs.

And yes there are some cases, where there are multiple witnesses. Marks on the ground. Radar. They are more difficult to explain. But they may have more to do with other less understood events. Than just ET, visiting.

Like what, the Holy Ghost? Many of these cases occurred decades ago--ample time to thoroughly examine all possibilities or theories.

BTW, what is 73, case with supporting testimony ?

Pascagoula.

The 24 top contenders for superhabitable planets are all more than 100 light years away, .. https://scitechdaily.com/some-planets-may-be-better-for-life-than-earth-researchers-identify-24-superhabitable-exoplanets/

There could be 2-3-4x more of such planets 200-300-400 light years away from us.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5FFOF0E2o

Nobody considered crop circles "irrefutable proof" of alien visitation. Only in a few cases have witnesses reported strange craft making them.

The thing is that when they were first publicised they were described as being something humans could not recreate... with the obvious implication that it was done by aliens. They even talked about how the stalks of the crops were bent over in a way humans could not replicate... which is clearly bullshit... but why bother mentioning such things unless you wanted to promote these crop circles as landing spots for alien space craft...

The 24 top contenders for superhabitable planets are all more than 100 light years away, .. https://scitechdaily.com/some-planets-may-be-better-for-life-than-earth-researchers-identify-24-superhabitable-exoplanets/

There could be 2-3-4x more of such planets 200-300-400 light years away from us.

As you increase the radius of a circle by 1/3rd you increase the volume of the circle by three times... so if the figure was 24 planets inside 100 lys, then a 130ly circle should have over 70 interesting planet... but that assumes an even distribution of stars and planets within that space which is probably not true.

I think the fact that life is out there is so likely that it could be described as certain. Whether we can survive long enough to start sailing between the stars to reach those far distant islands of life is another question... the distances are enormous... imagine the risk involved... in 200 years time you set off on a 50 year journey to one of those planets in an ark like space ship with people in some sort of stasis.... 10 years after you launch a brand new and much more powerful propulsion system is developed, and so a few drones are sent ahead of you to check the planet you are heading towards and it arrives 30 years before you do... to find the planet is uninhabitable because of the local wildlife or disease, or some hostile alien species has gotten there first... and 10 years after your drones are sent a brand new propulsion technology means you can send people in 5 years time so by the time your first ark arrives you have already fought and lost a war against the new alien colonists with the agreement that you will never return and they will leave earth alone... oops BTW there is an ark on its way... think of them as a snack because their technology is 50 years older than ours and you beat us...

That's a common sci-fi theme. Like the Stargate Atlantis where some group of Ancients were traveling in a sub-light ship at almost
the speed of light and stalled in time and still en route to their destination long after later generations had invented stargates and
warp drive.

But this is all just sci-fi. The fact that we have no warp ship visitations proves that no civilization out there can overcome physics.
Just like the potential that humans are the only technological life form in the galaxy is basically nil, the notion that all the technological
life int the galaxy somehow hasn't reached the right stage of development to achieve warp travel is of nil chance as well. Our
Sun is 4.5 billions years old and there are many yellow stars out there that existed billions of years before. So technological
civilizations have come and gone over billions of years. Thus it is impossible, if warp technology was attainable, for every single
civilization to have failed to develop it.

But one could try to argue that in some galaxy out there this tech has been achieved. But that is also unlikely since our galaxy
will have had millions of technological civilizations over billions of years. Scientific and technological progress may be slow but
not that slow and the age of the universe puts a limit on the argument that the achievers of the right level are super rare. If
there are none in our galaxy, then the "sampling" or "realizations" in other galaxies are not going to make up for it. Maybe if
the universe was hundreds of trillions of years old (basically steady state) then out there in the billions on billions of galaxies
there would be a few "miracles". But that ain't so.

It seems certain that physics is preventing long range space travel. As for exploring the 100 light year neighbourhood we need
power sources to get us close to the speed of light and then slow down. It is possible to accelerate rather close to the speed of light without
and enormous extra energy expenditure since the relativistic gamma factor has the form:

gamma = 1/sqrt[1-(v/c)^2]

so for v = 0.8c we get 1/0.6 or approximately 1.7. Say we had a = 9.8 m/s/s acceleration. Then we have v = at and we
would reach the speed of light (ignoring relativistic corrections in just under 1 year). In reality we could never hit v = c but
all the stalling would be for speeds limiting to the speed of light. For 80% or 90% of the speed of light the speed is attainable.
But 9.8 m/s/s acceleration is not easy to achieve so the acceleration would have to be spread out over decades.

Artificial gravity to prevent total atrophy of the human body would require space ships that had rotating surfaces on which
to stand like shown in some movies and many sci-fi stories. That costs energy too and for massive shielded space ships
not so little. If we are in the 100 light year radius then we have to travel close to the galactic plane and cannot avoid
all the debris (of whatever size accumulates there). For longer trips it would be possible to reduce the exposure to dust
and heavier interstellar objects (there are rogue meteoroids just like there are rogue planets) by moving outside the galactic
disk.

But wait, there is more. Supposedly dark matter can now form compact objects. (Whether it exists or is a problem with
our understanding of gravity is a subject for elsewhere.) So there may be quite a few invisible obstacles of unknown size
out there. Impacting a compact dark matter object is weird since there is basically zero EM involved. So you only feel
the gravitational interaction. For small objects this is a small force. But for large objects approaching even the Moon
size, the force is not so small. Hitting something like that at 90% the speed of light would be catastrophic. But even
if there were no large compact dark matter objects, if there are many smaller ones, they would act like a drag slowing
down travel. So the ship engines have another job now and that is to overcome the dark matter drag.

The fun never stops.

kvs wrote:
  The fact that we have no warp ship visitations

Fact? You've disproved all of the UFO cases over the past 73 years? Dunno the method of travel but it appears they can do it some way or other.

GarryB wrote:
The thing is that when they were first publicised they were described as being something humans could not recreate... with the obvious implication that it was done by aliens. They even talked about how the stalks of the crops were bent over in a way humans could not replicate... which is clearly bullshit…

Many "crop circles" are intricate patterns in the middle of fields. Hoaxers would have to be very talented and willing to invest a lot of time and effort; moreover unless there is evidence of tracks or other disturbances leading to and from the circles, they'd probably require choppers to make--pretty noisy and adding to the expense.

but why bother mentioning such things unless you wanted to promote these crop circles as landing spots for alien space craft…

Landing sites--"saucer nests"-- are known but crop circles are artistic works. The Alien Grand Design views them as one form of subtle acclimation to ET.

Just gonna throw a flash bang in here ( ): apart from presuppositionalist approaches to coherent world views (transcendental argument for God) and their success making alien civilizations quite unlikely and Neo-Darwinism being ridiculously starved of evidence for their central claims (i.e. pretty much everything apart from simple adaptation in the sense of changes in allele frequencies) as even atheistic professors of evolutionary biology have to admit (see image below), the low probability of technological civilizations is even being confirmed by atheistic, Darwinistic people as soon as they start taking a proper, competent approach.


MS theory stands for "Modern Synthesis", which is the current iteration of Neo-Darwinism; a "phenotype" can be thought of as a trait (such as an organ).
The photo is from a 2016 conference "New Trends in Evolutionary Biology" organized by the Royal Society in London with Professor Gerd Müller (atheistic evolutionary biologist) giving this keynote talk...

Begome wrote:….. the low probability of technological civilizations is even being confirmed by atheistic, Darwinistic people as soon as they start taking a proper, competent approach

Another view which ignores a multitude of sightings of unusual aerial craft and entities.

Another view which ignores a multitude of sightings of unusual aerial craft and entities.

Nah that simply isn't the topic of the research paper; those "sightings" could simply be illusions, delusions, hallucinations, people seeking attention, military equipment being tested or even more exotic explanations like demonic activity (the latter obviously requires a certain world view). All the paper does is prove how even under the assumption that some form of Darwinism is true (which is not all that reasonable these days) the existence of technological civilizations outside Earth is rather low. Thus, the alternative explanations I've listed become more likely.