UFO'S ARE REAL

[apollo@pluto]

HELLO IM APOLLO@PLUTO AND IM HERE TO DEBATE ABOUT LIFE ON OTHER PLANETS, THIS WILL OBVIOUSLY EXPLAIN UFO'S. PLEASE VOTE FOR YOUR OPINION.

[Bob B.]

I'm afraid I can't vote on this one because of the way you've phrased the question.  I believe "life on other planets" and "UFOs = ETs" are stand alone issues.  One can believe in the possibility of extraterrestrial life while, at the same time, believing there is no link between extraterrestrials and UFOs. 

If I were to vote, I'd vote "Yes" for the possibility of life beyond Earth, "Maybe" for the possibility of intelligent life beyond Earth, and "No Way" for the possibility that UFOs and related to ETs.

[DonPMitchell]

Oh my.

Despite all the hoopla, no one has ever produced a credible alien spacecraft, just conspiracy theories and fuzzy pictures of pie tins tossed through the air.

It's nearly impossible to deduce how likely the formation of life is.  By the anthropic prinicple, we exist but this doesn't mean the probability of events was high.  There are a whole chain of conditions and events necessary, and we don't know what they are.  At least one of them might be fantastically rare.

You have to have a planet of the right size to get Earth instead of Mars or Venus.  It has to be the right distance from a stable yellow star that has a long life.  It has to have a strong magnetic field to keep its atmosphere.  Maybe it has to have a large moon to maintain rotational stability and avoid climatic catastrophes.

Very little is known about the first chemical steps that created life.  We know that amino acids and nucleic acids form spontaneously, that's been done in the laboratory.  But how did the first bacillus come into existance?  How did the first muscle protein happen?  Look at how long it took (about 3 billion years) for the Cambrian explosion to happen, so perhaps the formation of animals is freakishly rare.

So life might be common or we might be the only ones in the galaxy.  Certainly no new-age wishful thinking has any bearing on the question.

[ijuin]

I believe that there is life out there, but the claim that aliens have visited Earth in the past 200 years (i.e. in the time since we were able to recognize them as aliens instead of supernatural beings) is bunk. If so many of these UFOs are alien spacecraft, then how come only non-credible people have come forth with evidence? How come nobody who owns a radar installation has claimed to see aliens? Why is it only people whom we already consider to be on the fringe who make such claims, and not any reputable academics? You'd have to buy into the "all people with education/access to equipment are in on the conspiracy" line to explain that.

I think that most UFOs are human-made. Recall that the B-2 Stealth Bomber tests were sighted and mistaken for alien craft before it was announced to the public. Lots of these sightings are probably top-secret experimental aircraft and the like--do you know that the Air Force has actually built and tested prototypes of disc-shaped aircraft ("flying saucers")?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_disc_shaped_aircraft

[Johno]

AND said disc-shaped craft have been dismissed as hopelessly impractical, which leaves you wondering why beings capable of crossing interstellar distances make spacecraft which suck so badly in atmosphere, given that a degree of atmospheric flight appears to be part of the mission profile!

Okay, so perhaps there's something we're missing.  Who knows, maybe for a miraculous supraluminal drive, a disc shape is necessary, and maybe this requirement outweights the potential problems of a spacecraft that's inherently unstable in atmosphere.  Or maybe their antigravity/drag mitigation technology is sufficiently effective that there's practically no risk of a failure[1].

Or maybe disc-shaped spacecraft are products of delusional minds coupled with too many 1950s Science Fiction movies. . . 

[1] If there is ANY failure, the spacecraft would be lost in atmosphere, so this is by no means a trivial point!

[Bob B.]

Why is it only people whom we already consider to be on the fringe who make such claims, and not any reputable academics?

I think the normal answer from UFO believers it that reputable people do see UFOs but just don’t come forward about it because they are afraid of destroying their reputations and careers.  Of course, I don’t buy this response.  An intelligent and scientifically minded person wants answers, and I believe they’d liking discuss the incident with colleagues in an attempt to figure it all out.  I know if I saw something strange and unexplained, I’d probably talk to my amateur astronomy friends and ask their input into what they think it was I saw.

BTW, I’ve been an amateur astronomer for 20 years and I’ve never heard a fellow astronomer claim to have seen a UFO, and this is a group of people who spend more time looking skyward than anyone.  I think astronomers don’t see UFOs because they are familiar with most sky phenomenon and can recognize things for what they are rather jumping to the far-out conclusion that they’re seeing alien spacecraft.

I think that most UFOs are human-made.

I think they are either man-made stuff or naturally occurring phenomenon. 

AND said disc-shaped craft have been dismissed as hopelessly impractical, which leaves you wondering why beings capable of crossing interstellar distances make spacecraft which suck so badly in atmosphere, given that a degree of atmospheric flight appears to be part of the mission profile!

A disc is bad aerodynamically, but aren’t flying saucers supposed to be powered by some type of anti-gravity propulsion?  If they are allegedly using anti-gravity, then how the vehicle behaves as a lifting body is moot.

[Homo bibiens]

I assume here you are using the narrow definition of "UFO" as alien spacecraft.  I see things I can't identify up in the sky all the time.  I just don't think they're artificial spacecraft.

Well, actually, some of them probably are artificial spacecraft, but I'm pretty sure they came from earth