[awb]

Probably not aliens. The idea of them traveling massive distances and being slightly observed but never fully observed defies the odds.

Possible explanations: light, reflections, lasers, weather phenomenon, weather balloons, secret military tech, eye witness hallucinations (exhaustion, drugs, optical illusions, etc.), radar malfunctions, and hoaxes.

I remember there was a pilot who observed the “tic tac” UFO that said him and his buddies used to fly at night and turn on their lights while making a rapid maneuver and laugh when the UFO reports came in. Because from certain angles and evasive maneuver looks completely stationary followed by an other worldly rapid acceleration. But it’s all optical illusion and observer perspective.

You can believe whatever you wish, but I’m willing to remain skeptical until there’s more definitive evidence.

[brucethemoose2]

Orion's Arm's reasonably hard science fiction opened up my brain to how ridiculous a UFO would be. Humanity is "young" (9000 years since Apollo think?), and they have stuff like AI made megastructure sensors that can see movement on planets from lightyears away, hyper advanced and completely invisible nanotech that can govern planets, brains that span stars, and had it fairly early in their history. Even if our alien neighbors were that young (which is basically impossible), why would such a civilization have an atmospheric flying saucer? I makes no sense. Its like a caveman postulating that people will use smoke signals at 2023's tech level.

[mapster]

A third dimension being is unfathomable to a 2D being. And so on

[wruza]

Isn’t that purely geometrical notion? A “real” 2d object is also imperceptible to a 3d creature, because a flat plane doesn’t reflect anything; only particles do which happen to be ~somewhat in a single plane. The plane itself is abstract and doesn’t truly live in a 3d world.