UFOs. Do you think they are real?

[M'Sharak]

I was watching the History Channel the other day and came across a show that was talking about a UFO sighting in Los Angeles in 1942. It was called "The Battle of Los Angeles". I have never heard about this before now, (the Los Angeles sighting) and think it's really interesting. Supposedly they tried to shoot the craft down, they weren't sure if it was a real UFO or something from the Japanese. Here's soom footage about it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhjkMoWLE_Y

Not to sound like a cliché, but the prevailing theory is that they were in fact weather balloons (many of which had been released in the Los Angeles area) that prompted the initial barrage which was later compounded by smoke, flares, exploding flak, and reflections of spotlights off of the clouds which confused observers even more.

Given the justified fear of a Japanese attack on the West Coast from submarine launched aircraft, and coming so soon after the attack on Pearl Harbor...

There was also the matter of the shelling by a Japanese submarine of an oil field near Santa Barbara on the evening before the "Great Los Angeles Air Raid" took place. News about that got out just in time to have lots of people on edge, including the soldiers manning the batteries on the night of the 24th/morning of the 25th. (Both of these events--plus a couple of others--are altered substantially and played for comedy in the 1979 Steven Spielberg film 1941.)

UFOs? They're unidentified, but often end up being attributable to less-than-otherworldly causes.

 

[MANT!]

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7I8pC_DOXC4[/yt]

 

[FPAlpha]

I believe 99% of UFO reports can be explained naturally be it supersecret military aircraft (the kind of tech that gets used in lower levels of secrecy 20-30 years later), natural phenomena or just plain dumb/drunk people.

The remaining 1% though.. i also believe there is intelligent life out there and if FTL travel is possible by some means some races may have stumbled on us and are studying us.

 

[Amaris]

If another person attempts to be clever by saying "Yes I believe in them, as in I believe that there are sometimes unidentified objects in the sky...but I don't think they're alien spacecraft" is going to get a rolleyes, which i don't often do.
We're on page 2 and I think the joke's been made 4 times.

I wasn't joking. I assumed clarification would be in order when I made my post. There was no humor involved, other than general good humor when making a post.

 

[MNM]

I always have thought UFOs are real. I can't imagine we are the ONLY living creatures in this universe.

Even if you accept that there is probably life elsewhere in the universe, that's not a good reason for believing UFOs are spaceships.

Why not? Because humans at our current level of thinking and understanding of technology and physics etc dont think it's plausible that aliens could be here?

500 years ago, if you had tried to explain iphones, the internet, cars etc etc you would have been met with blank faces and most likely been accused of being a witch. Whos to say how things will change in the next 500 years.

I dont think any sane person would claim every unexplained aerial phenoma was an alien craft. I'd even suspect that at least 95% of the stuff in the sky has a simple explanation waiting to be discovered. But you only need one event to be proven to be alien change the world.

Even then, they might not be aliens as such, maybe humans from another dimension, maybe time travellers, maybe spirits teasing us, and so on.

Personally, I see no reason to dismiss the whole thing out of hand simply because humans arent capable of emulating such events at the moment. It would in fact be arrogance of the highest order to say "well we know it's not possible". Because we dont.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

Unless the aliens have warp drive, and it is relatively cheap, they are not visiting us. The chance of alien visits depends on whether faster than light travel is possible, on how cheap it is and on how common advanced civilizations are.

I find it unlikely that there are no other advanced civilizations. However, they could be far away. And without fast means of travel they aren't coming here. If they are nearby it's possible that they have visited us once or twice but it was probably a long long time ago. And they didn't know there was anyone intelligent before they departed... and maybe they didn't know even after they left.

There are two possibilities that would explain alien visits occurring now:
1. Cheap faster than light travel. If this is possible we might be getting visits as often as we did in the Star Trek universe. Hey, maybe three Ferengi crashed in Roswell in June 1947!
2. There are advanced aliens 4-10 light years away that can travel to Earth in 50-60 years, and can prepare prepare for such mission in 30-40 years. We broke radio silence in the late 19th century, and the aliens had just above a century to hear us and come (actually, a little less, because it took us decades before we made a lot of transmissions that were of distinct artificial origin). Now, this couldn't account for the visit of more than 2-3 spacecraft and they would have to be damn recent.

I don't think faster than light travel is possible because it would imply time travel and that would be quite a big thing. Even if it is possible, I doubt it's anything but extremely expensive.

500 years ago, if you had tried to explain iphones, the internet, cars etc etc you would have been met with blank faces and most likely been accused of being a witch. Whos to say how things will change in the next 500 years.

I don't think there were any iphones, cars or internet 500 years ago. And I think that even today such would be hard to explain.

 

[Haggis and tatties]

Here is a picture sent back by the messenger spacecraft at only 114 millions miles( 183 million kilometers), from earth, the two bright blobs you see in the bottom left are the earth and the smaller moon to the right of it, with the sun at 93 millions miles(150 million kilometers), away from us, it makes you release just how small we really are in the whole scheme of things.

 

[barnaclelapse]

I believe 99% of UFO reports can be explained naturally be it supersecret military aircraft (the kind of tech that gets used in lower levels of secrecy 20-30 years later), natural phenomena or just plain dumb/drunk people.

The remaining 1% though.. i also believe there is intelligent life out there and if FTL travel is possible by some means some races may have stumbled on us and are studying us.

Exactly. I don't know why that's such a stretch for some people.

(Shrugs)

To me it's always been very simple.

 

[FordSVT]

No.

I mean, I don't think we're the only life forms in the universe either. I just think that Earth, by its very nature, must be so primitive as to be unworthy of any aliens visiting us. If *you* were an alien, would you want to come here? Surely alien societies would be much more advanced. So there'd be no reason for them to visit US.

How is that in any way a logical argument when we have people sitting in the jungle watching great apes and building submarine vessels to look at invertebrates clustered around thermal vents a mile below the surface of the ocean?

Are you arguing that aliens would have to be so advanced they have no curiosity?

I think the vast majority of UFO sightings have natural or man-made explanations. I do, however, think that some people have seen things that defy explanation. I have no idea what they are, I'm not claiming to know they are aliens or faeries or balls of plasma. I think the ridicule of all UFO stories and of the people who tell them doesn't serve scientific interest. If there is some strange phenomena that sometimes shows up as glowing lights in the sky, don't we as a curious species that has supposedly embraced the scientific method owe it to ourselves to maybe find out what it was? Why is it acceptable to say "Shut up, Gomer, what were you smoking?", every time anyone says anything about a strange object in the sky or on the ground?

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

Here is a picture sent back by the messenger spacecraft at only 114 millions miles( 183 million kilometers), from earth, the two bright blobs you see in the bottom left are the earth and the smaller moon to the right of it, with the sun at 93 millions miles(150 million kilometers), away from us, it makes you release just how small we really are in the whole scheme of things.

WOW...small, yes, but I had NO idea that the Earth shone that brightly from such a distance! True, it makes sense when you consider what the other planets look like in our night sky, but I guess for some reason I'd thought our atmosphere would make Earth appear blue even at a distance. But THAT...dang, it's bright!!!

 

[YellowSubmarine]

WOW...small, yes, but I had NO idea that the Earth shone that brightly from such a distance! True, it makes sense when you consider what the other planets look like in our night sky, but I guess for some reason I'd thought our atmosphere would make Earth appear blue even at a distance. But THAT...dang, it's bright!!!

I believe this image is taken with lens with higher focal length. It's taken from the same distance the Sun is, which is twice the minimum distance between the Earth and Mars. In other words, Mars should look just as bright on our sky when it is brightest, more or less. This is brighter than it would look to the naked eye.

 

[Pingfah]

I always have thought UFOs are real. I can't imagine we are the ONLY living creatures in this universe.

Even if you accept that there is probably life elsewhere in the universe, that's not a good reason for believing UFOs are spaceships.

Why not? Because humans at our current level of thinking and understanding of technology and physics etc dont think it's plausible that aliens could be here?

No, just because A is not evidence of B anymore than A is evidence that your next door neighbour might be an alien.

A good reason for believing that UFOs are alien spaceships would be actual physical evidence that it is the case, otherwise it's just a highly spurious line of reasoning.

It's a good reason not to rule the possibility out, as I don't myself, but not to believe it to be true.

500 years ago, if you had tried to explain iphones, the internet, cars etc etc you would have been met with blank faces and most likely been accused of being a witch. Whos to say how things will change in the next 500 years.

I dont think any sane person would claim every unexplained aerial phenoma was an alien craft. I'd even suspect that at least 95% of the stuff in the sky has a simple explanation waiting to be discovered. But you only need one event to be proven to be alien change the world.

Even then, they might not be aliens as such, maybe humans from another dimension, maybe time travellers, maybe spirits teasing us, and so on.

Personally, I see no reason to dismiss the whole thing out of hand simply because humans arent capable of emulating such events at the moment. It would in fact be arrogance of the highest order to say "well we know it's not possible". Because we dont.

I don't contest any of that, I didn't dismiss the whole thing out of hand, nor did I say I know it isn't possible.

 

[Lonemagpie]

UFO as in an Object that's Flying and you couldn't identify it at the time so it's Unidentified - absolutely.

UFO as in spaceship full of little grey men from Zeta Reticuli, no. Though I love it all in Sci Fi.

Alien life elsewhere in the universe- absolutely, it's a mathematical certainty.