[andrewstuart]

There's no aliens anywhere near earth. There really aren't.

Given the staggering, likely impossible task of traveling between the stars, it's essentially impossible that they'd turn up on a planet with this many people and be so in tune with our technology and media that they manage to stay out of sight entirely, except for some government secret Area 53 base or whatever.

If you think that traveling between the stars is even remotely practical then maybe watch this video that illustrates the distance only to the closest star, let alone any further away: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCSIXLIzhzk

[philipkglass]

The hypothetical aliens don't need to be mortal biological creatures. An advanced probe "crewed" by artificial intelligence could take thousands of years to send copies of itself from one star to the next using propulsion concepts from the 1960s:

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propuls...

They could have have arrived in the solar system 100 million years ago, just running maintenance routines and sending observations back home ever since. They don't need to know anything about human culture to stay largely unobserved, any more than human bird watchers need to know bird culture.

I don't think that this is particularly likely but known physics permits alien visitors if you assume that they are stealthy (not acquisitive) and very patient.

[phs318u]

To be honest, the hardest thing for me to believe with this hypothesis is the possibility of a society that can not only survive for 100 million years, but maintain an interest in a subject for that long.

[HKH2]

Well, people will continue to wonder if any other places in the universe have sentient beings. Not sure why the question will go away when what caused the question is still around.

[jrflowers]

That’s precisely what an alien would post

[christophilus]

That video was excellent, for anyone who runs across this comment and dismisses it for being dismissive, I recommend the watch.

[andrewstuart]

It's when he jumps in the car and drives 200km that brings home the point.