22 minutes ago, Fielder said:

I do not have enough faith to believe that UFO's are aliens from another planet. They do make for a nice story to entertain.

Well I certainly do. Why not? We earthlings seem to think we are the only ones with calculating brains and an opposed thumb in the universe.

Logically there are plenty of Sol 3 planets in this vast universe with humans in various stages of development. Some just beginning and others far advanced from us. It's not hard for me to believe there are civilizations that are older far more advanced than we are. And that they look much like us. And that they are as curious about other worlds as we are. A trip to Mars from Earth would be child's play for them.

I wouldn't be surprised that some of them are walking amongst us now just observing and reporting back what they see. I certainly hope they see hope for us and not destruction. Before we can be good neighbors in the universe we have to be good neighbors here, among ourselves. When they see that perhaps they will welcome us and help us learn what they ave learned.

Am I thinking in fairy tales? Perhaps, or perhaps not. Though I will n ever live to see it, I hope it's perhaps not.

Noel

Deleted

Edited August 26Aug 26 by martin-w

21 hours ago, Fielder said:

I do not have enough faith to believe that UFO's are aliens from another planet. They do make for a nice story to entertain.

Well yes. It certainly does make for an entertaining story but I think you've nailed it Fielder; these things are all about faith.

Keeping faith when there's an obvious and reasonable explanation right in front us, keeping faith when there's (as usual) a complete lack of credible physical evidence before us, keeping faith when all we have is witness testimony and knowing some three decades have passed since courts in the UK, Canada and the United States have refused to accept prosecutions based on uncorroberated witness statements. Keeping faith when we know the witnesses are also promoting their book and keeping faith when we consider the vast and frankly unimaginable distances that separate our little solar system from our nearest neighbouring star....let alone the Milky Way itself...and beyond that the rest of the Universe...🤷‍♂️

UFO's have been spotted for over 130 years. So far each of those planets have independently decided to have their craft stay hidden. They do not announce themselves at 10 Downing or the Whitehouse. All those multitudes of visitors down through the century from so many civilizations arrived and then decided to then hide. So do all the cave dwarfs and garden fairies on Earth. We spot them from time to time, but they always run for cover.

2 hours ago, DD_Arthur said:

Well yes. It certainly does make for an entertaining story but I think you've nailed it Fielder; these things are all about faith.

Keeping faith when there's an obvious and reasonable explanation right in front us, keeping faith when there's (as usual) a complete lack of credible physical evidence before us, keeping faith when all we have is witness testimony and knowing some three decades have passed since courts in the UK, Canada and the United States have refused to accept prosecutions based on uncorroberated witness statements. Keeping faith when we know the witnesses are also promoting their book and keeping faith when we consider the vast and frankly unimaginable distances that separate our little solar system from our nearest neighbouring star....let alone the Milky Way itself...and beyond that the rest of the Universe...🤷‍♂️

Martin, are you a member of any of these UFO religions?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_UFO_religions

1 hour ago, Mike A said:

Martin, are you a member of any of these UFO religions?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_UFO_religions

Not any kind of religion.

Unless cats decide to form one.

I pay no attention to fairies, dwarfs, or UFOs. Think of all the various shapes and sizes of alien races visiting us from space that have been reported for 130 years. When just one of those ever says the reasonably expected words, "Take me to your leader" and is escorted to 10 Downing for the big reveal, then I will pay attention and believe in their existence.

Cave dwarfs hide by pretending to be tumbleweeds?

I lived just up the road from this village, about 5 miles for my entire life until I moved in 2021. Like many more rural areas of the UK, if something big happens it becomes new quite fast, it becomes talk of the towns.

Needless to say, I have never heard of this story or anyone ever talking about this story, I am going to enquire about this when I visit soon

I believe everyone 'to their own,' and personal faiths and beliefs, but as someone who has experienced a complete, unexplainable close encounter, which I will remember for my entire life ( I won't post the video again, as I've posted it twice before on Avsim ) I will always have an open mind and never dismiss anything as being impossible. Even after having witnessed three discs in the sky, each about the size of your finger nail at arms length, each one autonomous, with no lights or noise, cruising across the night sky. What did I see? Who knows, I have never suggested, over the years, that what I saw was anything other than unexplainable. That is exactly what it was. But it does 'beg the question' how could we possibly be the only living organisms in the entire cosmos? IMO, it simply isn't realsitic. For those who haven't seen this video, I'm pretty sure you will find it amazing! Do watch it until the end though... as it's fascinating.

Edited August 31Aug 31 by Rocky_53

1 hour ago, Rocky_53 said:

But it does 'beg the question' how could we possibly be the only living organisms in the entire cosmos?

I suspect there would be lots of organisms given that simple life appeared on Earth as soon as it cooled. However, complex life took a third of the age of the universe. So perhaps simple life is common but technological life very hard.

The other question, if other technological life exists in our universe, how would they get here across immerse distances. Maybe some kind of Alcubierre drive is possible and can be practical. We just don't know.

38 minutes ago, martin-w said:

I suspect there would be lots of organisms given that simple life appeared on Earth as soon as it cooled. However, complex life took a third of the age of the universe. So perhaps simple life is common but technological life very hard.

The other question, if other technological life exists in our universe, how would they get here across immerse distances. Maybe some kind of Alcubierre drive is possible and can be practical. We just don't know.

The problem here is that we think in human terms. The technological advances made over the past century would look like magic to people who lived only 200 years ago. Walking on the Moon, or talking to (and seeing) people thousands of miles away on small hand held devices would have been considered ridiculous concepts back then. We must never forget that we are constantly learning new things, and discovering new ways of doing things. Now, this may have nothing to do with the subject of UFOs. As "unidentified flying objects", they are not necessarily "alien spacecraft". However, it is important to remember that we do not know everything about the universe. The next great discovery in science could be just around the corner......

Edited August 31Aug 31 by Christopher Low

1 hour ago, martin-w said:

The other question, if other technological life exists in our universe, how would they get here across immerse distances.

Statistically it's almost impossible for technological life not to exist elsewhere.

It's almost impossible for us to imagine the numbers in a meaningful way either. Estimates for the number of stars in our own galaxy vary from 100 to 400 billion currently. In the observable universe we estimate some 100 to 200 billion galaxies.

However, that is just the observable universe. After this it becomes guess work. There could be 2 trillion galaxies...or there could be considerably more...

So vast, unimaginable numbers and vast, unimaginable distances. It's those distances that make interstellar travel so problematic. The Milky Way is some one hundred thousand light years across so any advanced drive system that is unknown too us would still involve a passage of time out of all conception not only to our life time but our own evolution...

Just imagine all that time, effort and technology...to end up crash landing in the Western United States in 1947 or getting shot down on a Welsh hillside in 2016...🤔

7 minutes ago, DD_Arthur said:

Statistically it's almost impossible for technological life not to exist elsewhere.

In terms of the entire universe, which may be infinite, and given that atoms can only arange themselves in a limited number of ways so must repeat, I agree. In which case there could be identical planets out there exactly like ours, including identical copies of all of us.

The above is minbogling so I prefer to limit my thinking to just our galaxy. And given that our experience of technological life suggests it takes a massive 1/3 of the age of the universe to arise, and given that our galaxy is about 13.6 billion years old, we could indeed be the only technological species present at this time in our galaxy. It could also be that technological life gets wiped out by some great filter before it gets to populate the galaxy or send probes here.

But again, we have no idea, we only have a sample size of one, us, our technological species. If we had a larger sample size we may draw a completely different conclusion.

Edited August 31Aug 31 by martin-w

2 hours ago, martin-w said:

In terms of the entire universe, which may be infinite, and given that atoms can only arange themselves in a limited number of ways so must repeat, I agree. In which case there could be identical planets out there exactly like ours, including identical copies of all of us.

The above is minbogling so I prefer to limit my thinking to just our galaxy. And given that our experience of technological life suggests it takes a massive 1/3 of the age of the universe to arise, and given that our galaxy is about 13.6 billion years old, we could indeed be the only technological species present at this time in our galaxy.

In a galaxy of upto 400 billion stars...just us? It seems unlikely....🤷‍♂️