• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

UFOs. Do you think they are real?

No, UFOs are not alien craft. Technological civilizations are too rare and interstellar missions would be too resource-intensive to imagine that we have been visited at all, let alone by a bunch of little craft whose behavior makes no sense.
 
of course they are real. but if they're aliens or high tech human technology is another matter. ufo's can be anything.

i think it was in the 80's when the americans got the splendid idea of letting the Blackbird (sr-71) fly over europe. according to declassified swedish files, the swedish defense force thought is was an alien spacecraft for years before the USAF accumulated enough common sense to admit violating swedish airspace. i wouldnt be surprised if at least half of the sightings are prototype aircrafts. and the rest being "weather ballons"
 
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 do believe that there is other intelligent life out there. To think that we are the only sentient life is crazy. Do i believe aliens have already visited earth or that the UFOs seen ARE spaceships? Probably not.

I'm still waiting for one to land in my backyard and whisk me away. I'd go in a heartbeat.
 
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.
Yeah, because being correct and actually knowing what words mean is just so rolleyes-worthy.

Rolleyes. :p
 
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.
Yeah, because being correct and actually knowing what words mean is just so rolleyes-worthy.

Rolleyes. :p

No, but the first time is OK, a couple more gets silly.

Also, we all know what people mean when they say UFO... it's inferred that it's an alien spaceship.
If I call someone dumb I hope people understand that I don't mean the person in question is incapable of speech, or if I say a platoon was decimated that I don't just mean 1/10th of the soldiers died.
 
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, wouldn't Occam's Razor suggest that the more likely scenario than aliens showing up over a major city and then doing nothing while being fired upon, is that nervous anti-aircraft gunners opened up on one or more stray weather balloons?

In answer to the question, I believe there is likely intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, I just don't think there's any conclusive evidence of them ever visiting here, and a whole lot of logical reasoning weighted against it.
 
I classify myself as an 'open-minded skeptic' as far as alien visitation is concerned. I don't reject possibilities, but for all of the UFO material that has thus far been published, I have yet to see/read anything that could be called incontrovertible evidence.

Maybe the greenies will flop down in the rose garden of the White House on December 21, 2012 and start generally mucking about. :devil:

I am reminded of a Mad Magazine parody of Trek. Kirk and Spock beam down to a planet and are greeted by this slovenly-looking character with bugs circling his head:

"Greetings, I am Flob, Keeper of Good Bath."

Kirk: "You look more like Slob, Keeper of No Bath." :guffaw:
 
No.. I do not believe they are real.. I do believe in life on other planets, but I don't believe we've been visited..

That said, I enjoy the culture around it and the Roswell UFO festival can be lots of fun.
 
I'm thinking as many stars as there are in our galaxy, there must be other places where comparable or superior technology developed. The distances involved are a significant barrier to physical travel between two systems.

Eventually some members of an advanced civilization are going to be mining asteroids and living for generations without visiting an astronomical body remotely resembling a planet. If one of those groups becomes independent of their star as an energy source and becomes dissatisfied with local politics (to the extent anyone can force asteroid miners to obey a government on a planet millions of miles away) they might strike out across the void so their remote descendants might have the option to mine another star's asteroids. As long as such voyages would take the descendants would be unlikely to have much interest in even visiting the surface of a planet, although they might be curious enough to send a few semi automated probes (similar in principle to the current Mars probes). Such a group might be able to operate quite a while before a planetary culture developed the means to discover them.

I'm thinking since inhabited systems must be a small minority the odds of species from different systems physically encountering each other, or a probe send by the other group, are pretty slim.
 
I gather there have been numerous, but extremely distant stars that have run short on hydrogen and become less useful or even dangerous for anything within hundreds of AUs. Members of an advanced technology orbiting such a star might relocate to interstellar space in order to survive. Even if their population is modest, setting course for another system would certainly be more interesting than permanently remaining in interstellar space. The crossing would certainly take centuries and possibly multiple thousands of years. With the effort and resources required to return from a planetary landing they might leave personally landing on a planet, especially for resource development or colonization, rather low on their priority list.

It wouldn't take technology much more advanced than our own to build probes to monitor our satellite communications without detection by either telescopes or radar. Positioned near our satellites such probes could learn a lot about our technology and biology from the documentaries on satellite/cable TV channels. A project like that could make earlier efforts using probes that enter the planet's atmosphere and land on its surface obsolete.
 
There is a lot of discussion about time/distance to traverse space. But, let's not forget the possibility of shortcuts like wormholes, interdimensional travel, etc, which I don't eliminate the possibility of, at least from a theoretical standpoint.
 
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.

The trouble with assuming that UFO = alien spacecraft is it makes people who genuinely see UFOs the object of ridicule. Rather than laughing at someone and disbelieving them we should be saying 'what could it have been?'.
 
Last edited:
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, wouldn't Occam's Razor suggest that the more likely scenario than aliens showing up over a major city and then doing nothing while being fired upon, is that nervous anti-aircraft gunners opened up on one or more stray weather balloons?

In answer to the question, I believe there is likely intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, I just don't think there's any conclusive evidence of them ever visiting here, and a whole lot of logical reasoning weighted against it.

Yeah I think the program mentioned this, too. But I still say it's a possiblity that something has landed here... why the controversy over the years? And it keeps going. No say on whether they are real or not. I think if the government is protecting us by not saying anything, is kind of morbid. If aliens wanted to attack us, I think they would of done it by now.
 
I think UFOs are real.

I think that there are objects seen in the sky that people cannot identify.

UFOs are real.

Are they alien spaceships? I highly doubt it.
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top