Bright Lights, Strange Shapes and Talk of U.F.O.’s

Anyone who thinks we are routinely visited by UFOs doesn't understand the huge hurdle Mr. Einstein put in place to ensure that this is, at best, an exceedingly rare event.

When you can't travel faster than light, you just can't get anywhere like from star to star in a reasonable time frame to be Zaphod Beeblebroxing around the galaxy.

Dating back to its eager embrace of the Condon report and even before, the Times has always has had a dismissive attitude toward UFO sightings. This article continues in that tradition.

I too used to address the idea of UFOs and extraterrestrials with knowing irony - until I started to read something about the phenomenon. Somewhat reluctantly, given my educational background in engineering and science, my views have changed.

For those that bring an open mind to the issue, I have some resources that you may find helpful. Leslie Kean's excellent book "UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go On the Record" and the French Cometa Report (available at http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/sociopol_cometareport01.... are excellent places to start. Take just an hour out and read either source: I assure you that it will be interesting.

Ugh. 77 percent(!) believed “there are signs that aliens have visited Earth"? I wouldn't have guessed a number so high. This is just as bad as 33 percent of Americans thinking "humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time"; i.e. denying evolution.

Now what I want to know - is every country so indifferent to science? Or is the American public just particularly so.

Note that the question of whether it is likely life has ever existed anywhere else in the universe is completely separate from whether or not *intelligent* alien life has not only existed, but also has left signs of visits right here on Earth.

Anyone interested in the facts about UFOs needs only visit the following link and follow up on the now totally declassified records of Project Blue Book conducted by the Office of Special Investigations (OSI), USAF from 1952 to 1969: https://www.archives.gov/research/military/air-force/ufos.html In summary, there’s no evidence that we’ve ever been visited by anything sentient from outer space. The plurality of sightings came from the mentally bewildered. At the other end of the spectrum were less-fantastic reports filed by seemingly sane and sincere people with a penchant for amateur astronomy. Regardless, none of the thousands of Blue Book investigations ever uncovered anything “weird” or inexplicable…and for good reason. Even if there are hundreds of super-intelligent life forms out “there”, why would they bother visiting our planet stuck on the edge of a modestly-sized galaxy located in the boondocks of a universe containing billions of galaxies? Especially since there’s adequate evidence available on the nightly news that our species is not very bright or even especially different from our primate cousins. Furthermore, how would they even know that we’re here? Our first coherent electromagnetic signal has traveled only 138 light years from Earth. Our galaxy has a radius of over 60,000 light years. The observable universe has a radius of 45.7 billion light years! We aren’t even a needle in a haystack…rather more like a speck of dust in a thousand-mile-wide sandstorm.

The UFO phenomenon is real. There is plenty of evidence in the form of credible witness accounts and documents that point to the phenomenon related to extraterrestrial craft not of this earth. This article is a quick and easy dismissal of the subject by one who has simply not done any in-depth research on the subject. My own UFO incident is well documented (Google my name). The media has consistently been intimidated by government denials. Before coming to quick, self-satisfying conclusions, do your job and do the research as real journalists are supposed to do.

If there are "extraterrestrials," and I believe that there are, I am sure they are so much more intelligent than we that they can figure out a way to infiltrate our reality without us ever successfully making contact with or "proving" them, if they want. And considering all the time that it's said they've presumably been around, that's what I sense they could be doing.. After all, what more intelligent otherworldly beings would consciously and sincerely want to let themselves be known and vulnerable to us crazy human societies here on Earth, given what they see that we do and have done to our planet and to each other?!

So we are supposed to believe the government's explanation? For years they denied the landings in Roswell, N.M. They denied there was an Area 51. I'd say we have some pretty gullible newspaper reporters!

I applaud both Mr. Davenport and Mr. Shermer for their measured input. In the past, both sides have overstated their case. The UFO community too often posited fantastical explanations that defied evidence; the skeptic community too often relied on ridicule and outright rejection without looking regard to the truly unexplainable cases. I hope that this topic can be handled more maturely going forward, so that we don't end up with what Jacques Vallee (or J. Allen Hynek) called the "secret college," a group of serious-minded scientists who need to remain in the closet about their genuine curiosity for fear of ridicule and censure. There are serious-minded people who are interested in this phenomenon, who can apply scientific skepticism and rigor to these problems while still acknowledging that there are cases that completely defy explanation. Most of the fun is in investigating the sightings and coming up with an explanation that fits. It's like detective work. Most serious-minded people interested in UFOs don't persist, for example, in calling a missile a UFO regardless of the evidence. As for the cases that defy explanation, there are serious works advocating for explanations other than the ETI hypothesis, whether it be Jung's psychological theory, Vallee's extra-dimensional mythicism, or many other non-tinfoil-hatted theories. The field is fascinating and those who are interested deserve more respect than has traditionally been given.

The ease with which we humans succumb to fantastical explanations for so many phenomena is disturbing. Perhaps it helps explain how people are hoodwinked into accepting fictions as facts. Worse, we deny science-based explanations when they are at odds with our religions, mythologies and superstitions.

'Although he is about as professional a skeptic as it is possible to be, Mr. Shermer said that he remained interested in the “supernatural, the paranormal, science and religion, God, extraterrestrials, U.F.O.’s, ESP.”
He added, “It is all fascinating and, if it were true, it’d be fantastic.” '

And I wish we lived in a universe where space travel is as easy as in Star Trek or Star Wars. But alas, that is long long ago in a galaxy far far away.

"Usually a more down-to-earth explanation?"

"Extraterrestrials are like deities for atheists" is kind of a strange statement. In pop culture i.e. Star Trek, Star Wars ... the ET's aren't god-like. The desire for knowledge about whether we're alone as sentient beings in the universe is not the same as "spiritual need" in the religious sense.

I've never a UFO, though I do agree with the NatGeo poll that Obama would be better at handling an alien invasion than Mitt Romney. Or a zombie apocalypse. Or a little thing called "the economy".

I was ridiculed online when I suggested that some of the structure of the Trident launch photographs was associated with a supersonic shock wave, with the implication that the photos were all somehow doctored. Basically, one cannot win for losing with any comments on the internet.

It's disappointing to learn so many Americans are willing to believe the nonsense of alien "UFOs". I'm afraid that is related to the prevalent dismissal of scientific information and method as either not important to learn or not important to heed. And right-leaning politicians and media and religious fundamentalism seem to foster such anti-science biases. What can be done?

We were in LA and saw the first of the missile test launches; it was clearly visible to us and half the West coast. We recognized it for a missile immediately and wondered for a few minutes what the state of the world was...

I'm a bit surprised by Michael Shermer's comment that extraterrestrials are like deities for atheists. Shermer, of all people, should know that atheists have no deities -- Duh.

Actually, UFOs exist, Unidentified Flying Objects, that is. It doesn't mean, however, that those have anything to do with extraterrestrial phenomena.