Do you believe Earth has ever been visited by extraterrestrials?

[Helm]

I would say the vast majority of UFO sighings are explainable as something else most often weather phenomenon but the few that can't be explained this way are probably unmanned extraterrestrial probes of some description. Though I very much doubt they have ever come here in the flesh it would be a long way to come for no particular reason and they don't seem particularly interested in making contact with us, I'm assuming we're not developed enough for them to be more than casually interested.

[Valiant Champion]

yes

[Jaketh]

the Earth has a multi billion year long history, humans have only been around for tiny tiny fraction of that. its entirely possible some ancient alien civilization long dead, visited our planet ages ago

[Helm]

If they came here in the distant past there is no reason why they couldn't still be keeping tabs on us, there are UFO sighting that's that go back to ancient Egypt and Rome and they seem to have seen much the same onjects in the sky people see now.

[Jaketh]

If they came here in the distant past there is no reason why they couldn't still be keeping tabs on us, there are UFO sighting that's that go back to ancient Egypt and Rome and they seem to have seen much the same onjects in the sky people see now.

yes assuming they where not destroyed by some event, there are millions of different things that can kill a planet in the universe, also the distance to the next habitable star system would take thousands of years using current technology and dozens using something that goes the speed of light so its unlikely any but the most advanced of alien civilizations could reach us. And they cant keep tabs on us now without us being aware of it, we are using dozens of different sensors to monitor anything coming in and out of our solar system

[Helm]

yes assuming they where not destroyed by some event, there are millions of different things that can kill a planet in the universe, also the distance to the next habitable star system would take thousands of years using current technology and dozens using something that goes the speed of light so its unlikely any but the most advanced of alien civilizations could reach us. And they cant keep tabs on us now without us being aware of it, we are using dozens of different sensors to monitor anything coming in and out of our solar system

They may no longer need to live on planets, and they could be living all over the universe. UFOs do appear on radar so they have been detected as physical objects.

[Jaketh]

They may no longer need to live on planets, and they could be living all over the universe. UFOs do appear on radar so they have been detected as physical objects.

the technlogy to live in space 24/7 isnt that advanced(just need a greenhouse and artificial gravity) but still, the vast distances required wouldnt make regular visits by aliens feasible, even traveling the speed of light(and nothing travels faster then the speed of light) would take far too long

[Helm]

the technlogy to live in space 24/7 isnt that advanced(just need a greenhouse and artificial gravity) but still, the vast distances required wouldnt make regular visits by aliens feasible, even traveling the speed of light(and nothing travels faster then the speed of light) would take far too long

They may live in the "space between spaces" to quote Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Crytal Skull, there's no way of knowing how a civilisation millions of years more advanced than us would end up, certainly vast distances won't be an issue for them if they can play around with the laws of physics.

[Elfdude]

I would say most probably. However I can't say for certain without evidence. Basically probability wise it's highly unlikely life doesn't exist elsewhere in fact most scientists agree we've already found extraterrestrial life in this solar system. Albeit bacterial at best. Our solar system is around 5 billion years old or so, life seems to have evolved on asteroids, mars and titan and possibly many other areas. This leads to the conclusion that given the same basic ingredients life should form elsewhere. Via spectrometry we can determine the compositions of star systems and our basic ingredients are far from rare. This leads to the principles in physics that laws apply universally (even if they apply relatively they are universal) i.e. if it happened here and in unlikely places like asteroids and volcanic moons it more than probably happens elsewhere. That's only accounting for life with the same basic ingredients as us. There's possibility that life could evolve from a number of bases that we don't know about because of the attributional bias we all suffer from on earth.

Thus with the universe at least 14 billion years ago once star systems were formed planets theoretically could too. After that give it 5 billion years to cool and evolve and it's possible that civilizations are already billions of years old. Their technology at that point would be awesome.

The fermi paradox to me is idiotic because as soon as intersteller colonization comes about intersteller law is almost certain to evolve afterwords meaning a galactic counsel of advanced alien civilizations isn't so improbable. Exponential colonization and resource stripping isn't a likely phenomena especially once civilizations can synthesize matter.

yes assuming they where not destroyed by some event, there are millions of different things that can kill a planet in the universe, also the distance to the next habitable star system would take thousands of years using current technology and dozens using something that goes the speed of light so its unlikely any but the most advanced of alien civilizations could reach us. And they cant keep tabs on us now without us being aware of it, we are using dozens of different sensors to monitor anything coming in and out of our solar system

Actually they could easily keep tabs on us. Not only do we understand stealth technology we're grasping the idea of redirecting waves on very small level i.e. invisibility. All of our detectors focus on detecting wavelengths if the waves aren't reflected back to us then they don't detect anything. Further it seems to me it's unlikely that any civilization would use radio frequency or anything close to it for it's transmissions instead relying upon quantum entanglement to teleport information from one place to another instantaneously or perhaps something we haven't even guessed at.

the technlogy to live in space 24/7 isnt that advanced(just need a greenhouse and artificial gravity) but still, the vast distances required wouldnt make regular visits by aliens feasible, even traveling the speed of light(and nothing travels faster then the speed of light) would take far too long

FTL can be achieved via warp drive (mathematically proven and even designed just impossible to manufacture right now) which physically compresses space in front and decompresses space behind the ship. It theoretically could be achieved via a stutter mechanism which essentially rather than accelerating teleports the ship quickly forward step by step and it could be achieved through a wormhole to mention a few methods.

Still I'm rather skeptical of eye witness sightings with the lack of physical data. Visual information is very easily skewed or altered by numerous physical effects. If aliens are here I doubt they're flying around clearly visible or detectable.

[Tacitursa]

Still I'm rather skeptical of eye witness sightings with the lack of physical data. Visual information is very easily skewed or altered by numerous physical effects. If aliens are here I doubt they're flying around clearly visible or detectable.

I feel the same but some sightings have been reported then tracked on radar by the military. You cannot track altered vision etc on radar.

In some sightings jets have even been scrambled to intercept after tracking said sighting such as the london bound flight from athens a few years ago.

[Trax]

No.

[Sulfurion Blackfyre]

No.

I knew there would be a civitate coming up with a "my answer is the only real answer" one-liner. It's just so common.

Also, lol @ the assumption that all life must have an earth-like planet as an origin and be carbon based. And who says that a civilization/race did not find a way to go around our feeble theories about the impossibility of this or that? I mean, humans only got as far as the moon, and we act like we know everything there is to know. Earth is one, ONE planet. There are uncountable, possibly infinite galaxies in the universe. What makes anyone think that earth, this little piece of rock is the only possible place that complex life could evolve? Seriously, it's just unlogical to assume there's nothing out there.

I do also believe that we have been "visited", and are, by extraterrestrial beings. There's just too much evidence to deny it.

[Nimthill]

Possible, yes. But since I believe that the size and number of planets is finite (outrageously large, but still finite), that doesn't mean that a remote possibility has to have happened. So I don't think it happened; but naturally I cannot prove this. It is quite irrelevant too.

[BunnyPoopCereal]

Possible, yes. But since I believe that the size and number of planets is finite (outrageously large, but still finite), that doesn't mean that a remote possibility has to have happened. So I don't think it happened; but naturally I cannot prove this. It is quite irrelevant too.

This makes so much sense yet no sense whatsoever. I would have to guess yes to the poster.

[Helm]

In the case of being able to effectively travel faster than the speed of light if it can be done then eventually it will be done, if not by us then someone else will get around to it or they already have. The only things that can't be done are the things that aren't possible.

[Tacitursa]

I think they have based on reports from civilian , commercial and military aircraft. Civilian and Commercial aircraft sightings less so as there knowledge about other countries military aircraft and military aircraft in general is limited.

But experienced military pilots have a pretty good understanding of modern speed and capabilities. And the goverment does seem to have people at hand that deal with reports and from what ive read and seen they ussualy the first on the scene doing all the covering up untill the goverment feels like telling someone about it.

The locations of alot of sightings are strange too, As far as i know the military does not test prototypes in the airspace of other countries and places like the mid atlanic they avoid commercial air traffic and populated areas such as capital cities. On the flipside any UFO sightings in remote locations or near airbases such as area 51 should be ignored.

As for a more nutjob theory i sometimes think the sudden change in advancement and birth of religion has a bit of UFOness to it, There's quite alot of mysteries in the world such as egytian pyramids and certain structures in the world are made of rock so hard it can only be cut with diamond tools yet there's a few locations where such stone has precision tooling on it thats a challenge to recreate today by a skilled stonesmith using modern tools.

And you get things such as these created in south america over a 1000 years ago.





They clearly look like aircraft and have all the correct aerodynamics. They have even been built to scale and tested by people.

Then you have the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazca_Lines in Peru which can only been seen from the sky. It's probably just a coincedence but you cant help but feel that south america had something in the sky back then.

[Trax]

I'm very pessimistic about the possibility of civilizations surviving long enough to develop interstellar travel.

[Phier]

There is also the possibility that interstellar travel is in fact near impossible. Even a society that had been around for millions of years would have only been able to do a very small exploration if they traveled at sub light speed.

[Trax]

Or maybe even if it is possible civilizations are simply not interested in exploration or unwilling to pay the price.
One just has to think how little your average person cares about spaceflight after 50 years, I can only see the situation getting worse
as the time passes.

[Trax]

UFOs are about as real as ghosts and fairies, people have seen those too.

There's quite alot of mysteries in the world such as egytian pyramids

What's so mysterious about them?

structures in the world are made of rock so hard it can only be cut with diamond tools

Well, apparently this is not true otherwise those structures wouldn't be there

As for the pictures, I don't know whether they are real or forgeries, but I know for sure that they look like aircraft
because we are familiar with the concept of aircraft. To someone unfamiliar they would probably look like insects.

When it comes to the Nazca lines, then if we absolutely need to have an explanation that involves aviation (which we don't), then I've seen speculation that the makers might have used hot air balloons - and that makes much more sense then all ancient astronauts put together.