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by actually_a_dog 1388 days ago
Personally, I 100% believe that UFOs and alien life both exist. After all, it would be hubris of the highest order to claim that we could identify every aerial visual phenomenon. And I find it extremely hard to believe that in the vastness of the universe, this infinitesimal speck we live on is the only place that the thing we call "life" exists. What I don't believe is that UFOs and aliens are connected, or that aliens routinely visit this planet.

First of all, if aliens did visit this planet, why here? There have to be many more interesting planets to go look at than Earth. If they stumbled on this planet by accident at some point, why would they bother to come back? Even if there aren't more interesting places, what's the probability that an alien being could even breathe the air here? I'm not willing to go full on Signs and speculate that contact with water might be deadly to them, but it's pretty reasonable to guess that aliens would have evolved in places with significantly different atmospheres than Earth has.

And, of course, none of this even touches on the vast distances in interstellar space and the level of technology that it would take to come here. It's certainly conceivable that aliens who are 5 million years ahead of us in societal development might have such technology, but how probable is it? And if they had that level of technology, why not just send a stealthy probe with the alien equivalent of a Really Damn Big Telescope(tm) and park it somewhere out in the asteroid belt if they're that interested in the antics of 7.7 billion primitive bipeds? Nothing really seems to add up for me in the direction of "aliens visit the Earth frequently and UFOs are evidence of those visitations."

2 comments

> First of all, if aliens did visit this planet, why here? There have to be many more interesting planets to go look at than Earth. If they stumbled on this planet by accident at some point, why would they bother to come back?

Where does this idea come from that we are "uninteresting" or less interesting than other places? Also why would these advanced beings not be able to canvas the entire galaxy? What if other places are more interesting, and teaming with alien craft, like Yellowstone is teaming with tourists, and we just see the occasional craft because we are a backwater.

> Even if there aren't more interesting places, what's the probability that an alien being could even breathe the air here? I'm not willing to go full on Signs and speculate that contact with water might be deadly to them, but it's pretty reasonable to guess that aliens would have evolved in places with significantly different atmospheres than Earth has.

Why does that matter? We can't breath in the ocean or space but we explore there.

> And, of course, none of this even touches on the vast distances in interstellar space and the level of technology that it would take to come here. It's certainly conceivable that aliens who are 5 million years ahead of us in societal development might have such technology, but how probable is it?

We have no idea whether it's possible or probable, and thus we also have no idea whether it's impossible or improbable.

> And if they had that level of technology, why not just send a stealthy probe with the alien equivalent of a Really Damn Big Telescope(tm) and park it somewhere out in the asteroid belt if they're that interested in the antics of 7.7 billion primitive bipeds? Nothing really seems to add up for me in the direction of "aliens visit the Earth frequently and UFOs are evidence of those visitations."

Why do we send people in person into the jungle to monitor animals instead of just cameras to record everything remotely? Why do people go to Yellowstone to see the sites instead of just looking at pictures?

1- Those "aliens" and UAPs could be terrestrial. Imagine an underwater civilization evolved independently from humans in a time scale much larger than our written history.

2- They can have all sorts of agendas. There are discussions that they have visited or interacted with human civilization since thousands of years ago. They may want to affect the course of our development for example.