By popular request, we are now going answer once and for all the major problems of life, the universe, and everything... in particular, is there evidence for UFOs being an artefact of alien visitors to this planet.

In the blue corner, those who believe this is so and that the evidence supports it. In the red corner, the sceptics.

I want to see a good clean fight, no hitting below the belt, and in particular: feel free to attack the evidence but I will not tolerate personal attacks on or from either side in this debate.

Over to you... and bear in mind that Occam's razor is sharp and cuts both ways!

42

Hard to know why someone would visit us and hide (most of the time). Until someone answers the questions of Why, I'm not interested in the What, Where, How or When.

I've seen a ufo it was wedge shaped flew and i could not identify. it.

now i know it was a B-2 spirit.

MRS, you make an excellent point. I'd go one step further and ask why would they be friendly (or at least have intentions that wouldn't cause us harm)?

But why would they be unfriendly or want to cause us any harm

I think we wouldn't know their intentions. But my thinking is that if they could get here then they are clearly beyond us. Would their frame of reference be different to ours, would right and wrong still apply (in the the same manner we would apply it).

In answer to MRS' question I would suggest if visitors came they would be more likely to show themselves than hide. But then again how would you show that something hasn't visited?

I think it was Hawking who said that if Aliens visit he thought it would be similar to when Europeans went to what is now the USA. That didn't go too well for the Native Americans.

Yeah, but what's the question?

I used to stay in a UFO "hotspot" at outskirts of the village of West Kilbride but despite the frequent consumption of fermented vegetable products to achieve an advanced state of mental incompetence I never seen anything in the skies...nor did I ever wake up with a sore backside from being repeatedly probed by little green men (or any other reason)!

I was always suspicious that the powers that be in the Village invented such "rumours" of there being sightings in to bring in tourists/visitors to the area...

http://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/scotsol/...t-Kilbride.html
http://www.scotsman.com/news/alien-invasion-of-ufo-hotspot-west-kilbride-1-466224#

Deep Thought didn't think about the question, it thought about the answer and helped design the Earth to compute the question.

I think if aliens visit Earth it might be more like when Tuesday refracted through Argon. Apart from making it more convenient for special effects' costume departments, I can't see any good reason why aliens are always depicted as having a broadly similar layout to earth creatures. Given the vast diversity of species just on this planet, with its particular range of evolutionary quirks, what always puzzles me is why we think that any alien life-form would even necessarily appear to us as such. I'm not sure we have the capacity to grasp how alien life would present itself.

Also, I think it is a typically arrogant mistake of man to assume that alien intelligence would demonstrate similar traits to our own acquisitive, inquisitive and destructive nature. Would aliens have an interest in the peculiarly man-like concept of building a craft and heading off to explore? There is no real reason that I can see that would insist on aliens being subject to our rules of evolution and development. It's not a law of physics, just a neat system on Earth.

All of which makes me think that the idea of conveniently recognisable "craft" on wobbly video and their supposed occupants as propounded by UFO "enthuisiasts" is total, utter, nonsense. Urchins in the street should be encouraged to point and laugh.

As it was probably some of my posts that ended the last thread i'll try to steer clear of posting up too much on this one.

However, (there's always a however) my issues are not with whether aliens exist. I think you'd have to be incredibly self-righteous to believe that no-where else in the infinite 'space' there are other lifeforms, self-aware or otherwise.

And I think alot of people on the previous thread agreed with that view, it was the science of TRAVELLING to our solar system (or any other for that matter) within a respectable timeframe, which threw up the greatest issues with 'visitations'.

My problem though, is with those who believe that aliens have some bearing on "why we are here" and "what our purpose in life is". This kind of self-important and self-indulgent reasoning is just delusional IMO.

Perhaps those are questions for another thread however...

(awaits mod approval)

For clarity - the thread is for the discussion of the evidence, not the motivation of those presenting it.

Not to get all star treky on you but to answers MRS's question.

It wouldn't be a massive jump to say any race that has mastered interstellar travel would be way way above us intellectuality...or at least some of them would be.

Given the ratio of plaints that are capable of sustaining life its unlikely we would have anything of value resource wise over a planet that's not full of idiots with weapons so *if* they were visiting its unlikely for that.

Any race that has the technology to visit and the energy to perform such a frivolous task would likely understand the impact of this on a none developed race and the dangers of technology they posses falling in to the hands of people that still shoot each over decomposed dino matter (not that there doing a great job of not being detected apparently)

That clears up the first question for me, as to my *opinion* on if we have been visited, from our understanding of how the universe works and every model we have suggests faster than light travel isn't possible, the energy requirements to get even close to light speed are imence as well as the time dilation issues with travelling at that speed. Distance is a big issue as well so a trip would take a pretty long time even from our locals.

Unless there is a gap in how we understand how the universe works (which there are admittedly) you can sleep sound in bed that any visitors would be friendly because we wouldn't know much about it if they were not

If they do arrive I do not want to be the bloke in the red sweatshirt who is sent to greet them, it never went well for the bit part artists on Star Trek and I would hate to repeat such a mistake now I am equipped with that info.

Why are aliens always green?

It's all that bumpy travel, space-travel sickness is the bane of interstellar travellers i hear

Luckily they all appear to speak English. So it would appear I'd have less problem communicating with them than I would a non-English speaking Frenchman or German.

Or some of the yoof in Southampton.

I did have the unpleasant experience of waking up next to what must have been an alien. Strangely, it seemed to consist of a bodyform (very) broadly similar to a female human... the alien had obviously paralysed me the night before with some substance which left me with a headache and seriously dehydrated. So don't mock the body probe stories..

I think we can be reasonably sure that any planets which are home to intelligent beings will have such beings because of evolution. Aside from supernatural causes, or aliens advanced to the point where they can engineer life, there's no other good mechanism for explaining how life would arise.

However, that doesn't mean that evolution will create similar creatures to us in any way, or even that it's likely to lead to intelligent creatures. Intelligence is very risky from a species' point of view - it requires big brains, which need lots of nutrition.

We don't know what conditions started our distant ancestors down the road to intelligence, or how likely it is that other worlds would ever experience something similar. We do know that for a few billion years the dominant intelligence on the planet was probably on par with something you can grow on a damp flannel.

If another world did evolve intelligent species it's fairly reasonable to assume that if they then developed the capability for space travel they did so for a reason - because they were curious about life elsewhere in the universe, or because they desired or needed something available on another planet.

None of those motivations lends itself to keeping nearly, but not quite, out of sight.

Wasn't that Chuck Norris

Time dilation works in favour of space travel, to an extent, if your ship can get close enough to the speed of light, because time will pass a lot slower for people on board the ship.

So a journey which takes 50,000 years from the perspective of external observers, might only take 40 years for those on-board the ship. In other words travelling to other stars within our galaxy would be possible within a human lifetime.

I understand that Andrew, I thought if it as only a few years would have passed for them but every one they ever met and even there civilisation would be long gone before they got back.
As such a trip like that would not be done just to mutilate some cows.

Blast my poor memory!

Brain the size of a planet...

If you do the sums, it turns out that provided you have the power to accelerate (e.g. a Bussard magnetic ramjet, not that anyone's demonstrated how to build one yet!) *anywhere* in the universe is within about 20 years travelling time. In the ship, that is - outside up to 13 billion years pass, which might be a bit of a bugger if you left the gas on...

But one with no signs of life.

Lets start the thread in a good natured fashion this time.

I will only provide 2 links at a time as people genreally do not have time to view.

The first the battle of los angeles 'not the film' probaby what it was based on.

The date was 25/2/1942 a ufo was flying very slowy across los angeles so as was time the US miltary tried to shoot it down firing more than 1400 shells at it in the process 3 civillians died

The miltarys response in 1983 was again asosiated with a weather ballon which was unaffected by the 1400 shells fired.

So here is the orginal broadcast & newpaper link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JcCpUkZh6k

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Los_Angeles

The second link was a recent event over Jeurusalem with 3 seperate cameras in different locations showing the extreme performance of the ufo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTQVtyh4XkI

I'd be interested in the professional's take on this.

Could it be construed that posting on this forum about any subject implies a measure of self-importance and self-indulgence? Is the fact that we have a forum about, and extol the virtues of, Coupes evidence of this?
Or sometimes we are given to "protesting too much".

The thread itself I found/find fascinating as it not only became a catalyst for some impassioned views but took me down lines of knowledge where I became completely lost - an education

The admirable thing about this forum is that in the main emotive subjects can be aired and a variety of opinions put forward without resorting to fisticuffs. Some like to believe in "reality" and others in "wonder" and I've got not problem with a mixture of the two.

Now am I sounding self-important......where are you PhD man? And are you "right" anyway

If you have any interest in UFOs at all then you must be aware that this has been extensively and comprehensively shown to be fake. Why would you try to pass it off as evidence?