Here we are 60 years down the road from the Kenneth Arnold "flying saucer", and still no clear-cut evidence for alien spacecraft. This in itself IMHO is a powerful argument against alien spacecraft. How can such a long period of time elapse and with our technology no smoking gun evidence have ever appeared? It has spawned paranoid fantasies of alien abductions, underground bases, mysterious government groups, coverups, etc. It has become a modern myth, like dragons, giants, elves, etc were in bygone times.

Once you become seduced by the myth, then everything looks like an alien spacecraft: ice particles in space, blurred images, strange lights, crashed ballons, etc. Denying the existence of alien spacecraft does not mean not having an open mind. Having an open mind means not jumping to unsubstantiated conclusions. Certainly some sightings remain unexplained, but unexplained means just unidentified flying object and should not be synomous with alien spacecraft.

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“He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever”
Chinese proverb
"All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence - and then success is sure." - Mark Twain.

That really is the major problem for UFOology. If there were even a "hint" of evidence to indicate that aliens were real, but there is none.

I am also "irked" by the disclosure idea. Believers stating that humanity is not ready to accept the idea of alien visitors, that we first need to be acclimated to the idea before the government can reveal the "truth". (which is always "just around the corner".)

Isn't 60 years long enough to wait??


(Aside...I didn't realize that it had been "60 years" until I read the OP...thanks, gzhpcu, for pointing that out.)

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"The facts gentlemen, and nothing but the facts, for careful eyes are narrowly watching." Isaac Asimov

CT believers often cite the panic that was caused by the Orson Welles "War of the Worlds" radio program that famous Halloween night in 1938, saying an equivalent panic would be caused by a disclosure on part of the government.

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“He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever”
Chinese proverb
"All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence - and then success is sure." - Mark Twain.

The world has seen Mars Attacks! .
No panic. We're ready.

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

Yeah, that's my anser to you in the OP. While I agree with your argument and to any logical person, it is a very strong argument, to those woo-woo'ers out there, they simply say "we know about them but 'they' are covering it up". I'm glad they have enough faith in the government to really believe that 'they' are the only ones smart enough and with the right technology to know about ufo's, and the rest of the scientific community is useless to detect them.

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.
"In order to increase awareness of the homeless, security have been given binoculars."

How can such a long period of time elapse and with our technology no smoking gun evidence have ever appeared?

Be careful with this argument. Yes, it's proper to presume there are no alien spacecraft until we have proof there are, but putting a time limit on it doesn't really work. When you're dealing with happenstance events, getting that conclusive evidence is a matter of luck. How long did we go without pictures of giant squid?

It has become a modern myth, like dragons, giants, elves, etc were in bygone times.

And, according to some psychologists and sociologists, for exactly the same reasons. Space aliens are the new angels and demons.

Once you become seduced by the myth, then everything looks like an alien spacecraft...

Just like everything looks like an angel or a ghost or a chemtrail or a man on a grassy knoll with a gun. There are a number of such predispositions, which ends up largely discrediting all of them. Show a group of predisposed people the same inconclusive photo and you'll get from each:

1. It's an alien spacecraft.
2. It's an angel.
3. It's a spirit orb.
4. It's a government mind-control device.
5. It's a terrorist.

Certainly some sightings remain unexplained, but unexplained means just unidentified flying object...

That's when they trot out the indirect arguments: It must be an alien spacecraft; what else could it be?

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

Not to nitpick, but in case of the giant squid, we already had evidence it existed: squid beaks in the stomach of sperm whales and suction scars. Not so in the case of alien spacecraft.

In the case of alien spacecraft, we have had 60 years of "sightings", certainly more than hundreds of thousands, yet not one provides evidence of an alien spacecraft. I am not denying the possibility of alien spacecraft, just saying that there is no evidence of any exisiting to date. We should really just speak of unidentified flying objects, whatever they may ultimately be.

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“He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever”
Chinese proverb
"All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence - and then success is sure." - Mark Twain.

The problem is that the US gov spent a lot of money with Project Blue Book to discredit most every sighting originally. With mostly crazy answers like Venus and swamp gasses, and birds. For what purpose? And in the end the Air Force publically announced that these crafts do exist but they seem to pose no threat to national security. There is most definitely a level of cover-up. I wonder what people will do in the future when they have to eat all of their words.

The Air Force never publicly stated that alien spaceships exist. They did state that a certain percentage of the investigated sightings were "unknown", which is not the same thing. Unknown is not equal to alien spacecraft.

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“He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever”
Chinese proverb
"All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence - and then success is sure." - Mark Twain.

Why do you consider those "crazy" answers? It is a documented fact that witness' have misidentified mundane objects (such as you have listed) as alien spaceships, so I would hardly call those "crazy" answers.

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"The facts gentlemen, and nothing but the facts, for careful eyes are narrowly watching." Isaac Asimov

And in the end the Air Force publically announced that these crafts do exist but they seem to pose no threat to national security. There is most definitely a level of cover-up. (emphasis added)

No. The words in italics are your invention.

The conclusion of Project Blue Book was that the phenomena (whatever it was) did not pose a threat to national security. They did not identify the phenomena, nor did they accept by default that they were alien spacecraft.. The Air Force merely concluded that there was nothing inherent in the unexplained observations that hinted they might be dangerous, whatever they were.

I wonder what people will do in the future when they have to eat all of their words.

When and if there is finally evidence that all these observations were the result of alien visitation, then I and those who think like I do will very happily accept that conclusion. That's what science does.

You want us to accept it before there's evidence of that particular supposed cause. If, down the road, your suppositions are proved correct, that doesn't mean you knew they were correct when you made them. You just got lucky. Your belief is currently based on faith, not on any objective evidence you can produce.

If you end up being right, it will be because your faith was accidentally correct. If we have to change our conclusions later, it will be because the composition of the evidence changed to make that believe objectively tenable.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

With mostly crazy answers like Venus and swamp gasses, and birds.

Venus is known to exist and it has testable properties. Swamp gas is known to exist and it has testable properties. Birds are known to exist and they have testable properties. A priori proof of existence and a set of testable properties makes these explanations automatically less crazy than pure conjecture.

Space aliens are not known to exist. Since no one can tell us what properties they or their alleged vehicles have, it is not possible to test whether some observation can be explained by them. No, swamp gas is not as exciting as space aliens, but real investigation is about what is provably likely, not about what you can imagine.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

Nice try Jay...you almost had me. Then I realised THIS little nugget of truth:

-We do not know what alien craft look like. (fact)
-People see stuff in the skies, and cannot tell what they are. (fact).
-Therefore, since we do not know what alien craft look like, and we see things that we cannot explain, then obviously they are alien craft because they look exactly like what we do not know they look like (fact by confused association).

'nuff said.

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.
"In order to increase awareness of the homeless, security have been given binoculars."

I wonder what people will do in the future when they have to eat all of their words.

I'd love to eat my words. What would be cooler than visits from ET?

But if aliens show up sometime, and tells us that this is their first visit, would you eat your words?

Come to think of it, is there anything that would even theoretically change your mind - i.e., convince you that alien spacecraft have not yet visited?

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"Slapping a guy on the head is just as funny now as it was eighty years ago."

'Cause if you don't spend the money, its taken out of your budget next year. Welcome to Beuracracy.

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Carl Matherly

Offical Battlestar Galactica Apologist

Named Time Magazine's 2006 "Person of the Year"

I'd love to eat my words. What would be cooler than visits from ET?

Me too. I got into aerospace primarily because I do consider it highly likely that other intelligent life exists in the universe, and I want to help the human race find it. But I want real proof of alien visitation, not just supposition.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

Well, you know, the nose is too pointy for it to be a 757 . . . .

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

I've also had this same idea. (I posted about it somewhere on this board)

I imagine that to be a more likely scenerio than suddenly discovering that aliens have been visiting us for years.

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"The facts gentlemen, and nothing but the facts, for careful eyes are narrowly watching." Isaac Asimov

I'd like to propose a little addendum to the Drake Equation. It would lead to a number for the probability that intelligent aliens visit the Earth during any particular human lifetime.

I think all you need are terms for the proportion of technological alien civilzations that eventually develop interstellar space flight, for the speed attainable on such flights, and for the frequency of such travel. You might also need a factor that takes account of the various possible directions the journeys could go (i.e. the fact that space is three dimensional)... not sure about that one. (You'd have to assume that journeys in every direction are equally probable, just as the Drake Equation assumes that civilizations are evenly distributed. I can't see any way to account for "space lanes", preferred routes, and the like; or for deliberate journeys to meet us based on their identifying us remotely.)

The original DE tells you how far away the nearest civilization is (on average). The further terms tell you how likely it is that they're passing by us at any given time. It should be trivial to express that as a probability of a visitation in a given 70-year span.

Of course, the problem here is the same as for the original DE: we don't have any way to determine the proper coefficients for many of the terms. You can pretty much plug in anything you want, and get any result from "not a chance" to "there are definitely reptiles running the White House".

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Relight the Firefly!

"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)

Of course, the problem here is the same as for the original DE: we don't have any way to determine the proper coefficients for many of the terms.

Drake never intended to defend specific values for any of the terms. The intent was to quantify and limit the effect of varying any one term. Drake knew that while specific values for some of the terms were, and would always be, elusive, others could be given high and low plausible values. Since the equation gives the relationship between the probabilistic factors, and does so under quite rigorous rules of statistical inference, you can use it to see how much each factor affects the final result. When dealing with large numbers of unknowns, it is very useful to be able to say things like, "Yes, we know X varies widely, but its effect is limited in the grand scheme of things."

The poor-man's interpretation of the Drake equation is simply that the gargantuan number of planets likely to exist in the galaxy means the chances of all of them being bereft of intelligent life are pretty small. That simply follows from the algebra of multiplying a very small number by a very large number -- you probably get a middle-of-the-road number.

But the mathematics of existence are not the same as the mathematics of the likelihood of two races coming into contact. Rather than multiply in that case, you divide. If there are bazillions of planets in the galaxy, chances are good that at least two of them will develop life. But the chances of those two finding each other among the bazillions of planets is miniscule, simply because they have to look in bazillions of places before they find it. That's where the division comes from -- the division of effort over so many possibilities.

So the same numbers put into the Drake equation to ensure the presence of other smart people in the galaxy, when put into the corollary equation similarly ensure they'll never find each other.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

I´m a believer in the UFO phenomea in some way, but with caution.

I´dont believe that aliens are the replace for demons or angels. I believe that some people were witnesess of something, and often a mundane an simplistic answer has been given to them.

A couple of question that i would love to ask to a hardcore believer is: why is it that an UFO doesnt crash in a cafe in the middle of a city, or in a semirural area...or why is that there is almost zero sightings from astronomers.

I was going to open a thread for the extraordinary and yet unexplained O´Hare sighting, but i regret. I could get virtual fried or crucified before writing the words O´H...

Sorry for my english.

I've been an avid amateur astronomer for nearly 40 years and gave lectures and observing runs to the general population for over a decade.

One very beautiful evening doing a small telescope run, we had a magnificent green/orange bolide go overhead, which broke into several largish pieces. I explained to the group I was with what it was, why it was coloured so, and I congratulated them on their good fortune at having seen it (I have only seen 3 comparable fireballs in nearly 40 years of looking up!)

One gentleman in the group however, clearly somewhat shaken, remained quite convinced that the object could not be natural. He was adamant that a natural object could not be so brightly coloured and no amount of explanation would convince him otherwise. I don't know if he thought it was ET (admittedly he didn't say so), or perhaps a pre-emptive military strike from some nation, but he refused to accept my more prosaic explanation. No way, man!! - he'd seen the sky plenty of times before but he'd never seen anything like that!

Meh - some people will just believe what they want to believe. I'm afraid I have since given up believing that they can be swayed by logic.

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"I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day." - Douglas Adams

"Certainly, in the topsy-turvy world of heavy rock, having a good solid piece of wood in your hand is often useful." - Ian Faith

Actually, I've heard it said the fact that they haven't contacted us is proof they are intelligent.

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Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
Isaac Asimov

I don't believe that aliens are the replace for demons or angels.

You may have misunderstood me. What I mean is that psychologists and sociologists and other people who study belief abstractly as an academic subject theorize that modern people's belief in UFOs and aliens is very similar in many ways to beliefs among ancient people of, say, good and evil spirits or other supernatural phenomena. And they theorize that believing in UFOs and aliens today serves a similar purpose in society as belief in spirits, demons, angels, and other supernatural things did in ancient societies.

It's a scientific theory proposed to explain belief in UFOs, not a belief that UFO believers consciously accept. In fact, I daresay they'd reject it.

It's a touchy subject to discuss in some circles because the research is academic. As such it lumps together certain belief systems that people might not wish to consider equivalent. Someone who believes in Jesus but not in UFOs might legitimately bristle at having those two beliefs put into the same category. It's important to realize that the researchers don't make a value judgment on the relative intellectual merits of each belief, or infer intelligence (or the lack thereof) from belief. They merely want to understand the effects that follow from the belief. They do assume that the beliefs are false, but only for the sake of argument.

I believe that some people were witnesess of something, and often a mundane an simplistic answer has been given to them.

I have also seen skeptics dismiss sightings on grounds I felt were too aggressively dismissive. You have to consider very seriously the alternative that the witness saw something and didn't just make it up. That is, if you can't find some known phenomenon that seems to fit, you don't get to dismiss it on those grounds as a trick of the eye.

But at the same time I see UFO believers try to argue that people must have seen exactly what they said they saw. It takes experienced judgment to get useful evidence from eyewitness testimony. And many UFO believers seem unwilling to consider that mistaken identity, misinterpretation, optical illusion, or just plain "seeing things" are expected in eyewitness testimony. It is, sadly, notoriously unreliable and we have to treat it as such even when charity prompts us otherwise.

It's sad that "seeing things" is stigmatized as a sign of weakness or mental insufficiency, because we all do it. It's not the same as hallucinating.

Mundane explanations are mundane precisely because they occur frequently, making them more likely (all other things being equal) to explain some observation than alternatives that occur only seldom. They may not be as exciting as space aliens, but they comprise the bulk of human experience. They cannot be set aside lightly.

"Simplistic" is problematic because many straightforward explanations are set aside as "simplistic" only because the space-alien hypothesis is assumed to be a priori as credible as others. If swamp gas explains 9 out of 10 evidentiary points, you can consider it simple in the absolute sense because it cannot explain all the observations. But because the space-alien hypothesis has no testable properties, it explains zero out of 10 evidentiary points and is thus clearly rejected in favor of swamp gas. Very often the space-alien hypothesis is just formulated ad hoc to answer the evidence, which of course offers no value as proof. A hypothesis that is a priori plausible and explains 9 of 10 points is tenable.

...why is it that an UFO doesnt crash in a cafe in the middle of a city, or in a semirural area...

Statistically those areas comprise only a very small portion of the Earth's surface. All things being equal, space alien wreckage is most likely to fall in the ocean unnoticed.

...or why is that there is almost zero sightings from astronomers.

An excellent question. The typical answer is that astronomers are part of the coverup, or are among the ranks of the irrationallly skeptical, so they refrain from reporting what they see as a matter of maintaining their status.

A better answer is that astronomers are more experienced at observing aerial phenomena and are either unsurprised at the number of unexplainable things they see, or are able to explain much more of the things they see.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

Great post JayUtah.

Well, the "almost zero sightings from astronomers" it was compared with the big mass of sightings; the comparative number is tiny.

I like what the Telescope/Observatory Operator of the Adler Planetarium & Museum of Chicago and administrator of the Chigago Astronomer says:

Out of the thousands of hours I have spent looking up....I can only say that I saw only two events that I could not explain it source.

I agree on most of the images produced of ufo's...many of them ignorantly blatent on what it actually is. The dust on the lens, camera movement...and my favorite...out of foucus objects. All can be discredited.

But, there are a very small few which look pretty good to me.

I would love to ask him what is "pretty good" for him, because it sounds like maybe he is relating what he saw with the preconcieved idea of an UFO as an alien spaceship, before making a more extensive research of the sighting.

Sorry for my english.

The serious study of UFOs is tainted and hampered by so many factors, some of them of the UFO believers' own creation.

We know that some of the photographs and video are hoaxes. We know that some of the UFO believers stubbornly and irrationally reject well-suited prosaic explanations. The activity of the fanatics and crackpots dilutes credibility for those reasonable people who simply made a significant observation whose explanation does not lie in their experience or understanding. And because UFOs are such a socially, politically, and ideologically loaded phenomena, serious researchers are scared off -- people who normally would be fascinated to study the very few sightings that defy plausible explanation by natural means.

Although the explosion of photographic and video technology has put a camera of some kind in nearly everyone's hands, that doesn't change much. Some UFOs are phenomena caught only in the camera, and thus may derive from the camera. The camera is helpful only to document what the witness has seen with his naked eye; if he saw it and photographed it, then we can reasonably rule out a trick of the eye.

The principal frustration remains the inescapably subjective nature of most of the sightings. The witness obviously fails to identify the phenomenon. But he can describe it to another only imperfectly, thus making anyone else's attempt to identify it somewhat suspect. When you have happenstance occurrences, you have to concede that the eyewitness and the expert are almost never the same person.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

This is funny. I too have been an amateur astronomer for over 30 years and spent many years in the US Navy. One morning, I got up for my 3 AM tour of the sub and a young and impressionable topside watch told me he had just seen a missle fired from across the river at our base. He told me there was no explosion so it must have missed. I listened into the night but could hear no sirens from fire trucks/ambulances from such an event. I asked the watches from the sub next to ours and they told me that they saw it but did not think it was a missle but possibly a meteor. After a few more questions, I was satisified that the event was a bolide and told the young man that is probably what was seen. He insisted it wasn't but I told him he was probably incorrect in his conclusion. I don't recall telling the duty officer that instant but did mention it to him when I next saw him. Sure enough, the following day had an article about a bright fireball visible over New England at the time he saw the "missle". I showed him the article and he still insisted that it might have been a missile even though there was no mention of it in the paper or nobody else reported a missle fired at the sub base.
People tend to believe what they want to believe and do not like to admit error. This is why many UFO reports go unexplained. The reports usually have errors that make the event sound exotic but really are just misinterpretations/errors in reporting of the actual event.

[QUOTE=sts60;926014 SNIPPET
I'd [i]love[/i] to eat my words. What would be cooler than visits from ET?

Riding with them. pete

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A third rate theory forbids.
A second rate theory explains after the fact.
A first rate theory predicts.
A. Lomonosov

Ah. A Life of Brian experience. "Lucky *******!"

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"Slapping a guy on the head is just as funny now as it was eighty years ago."

There undeniably exist aerial phenomena which are hard to explain. Otherwise the air forces of various nations would not have bothered to conduct investigations. For example, the Italian air force also registers intrusions of their air space by unexplained phenomena. They, however, only are interested in asserting that there exists no danger, not in conducting a scientific investigation. Maybe the scientific investigation of such phenomena would not be stigmitized if it were not associated a priori with the alien spaceship concept.

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“He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever”
Chinese proverb
"All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence - and then success is sure." - Mark Twain.