Yes.

Maybe, but i do believe there is life on other planets. We cant be the only ones in this huge galaxy.

Yes! I once lived in Roswell. :0) I grew up with like-minded individuals. Later in life, I had a LOT of time on my hands working in computer rooms. I've read a couple hundred books on personal accounts. Betty & Barney Hill for instance.

Well, as we have recently learned the Pentagon believes in them. By releasing the 3 fighter plane videos (tic-tac, Go fast, and Gimble ufos) they have confirmed that they do indeed exist and can easily out maneuver our best defenses. If the government has been trying to poo-poo the phenomena for the past 70 years then it must have been wise to do so. I doubt we could handle the full story, it would be a quantum leap for our brains to handle that jolt into a higher plane of reality.

@User I live in Roswell now!

@cooper8828......I was in 1st grade, 1965. It was common knowledge aliens existed. :0) They even had an alien museum! ☺ (I've never seen or witnessed anything unusual....but we can't be the only ones statistically speaking)

@User They just remodeled that museum during the pandemic shutdown! I've never seen anything weird here, but I have around Grants. I was camping near Malpais and just laying out watching the sky. Something was moving across the sky, up very high, came to a stop, then zoomed off at a right angle.

Unidentified -- yes, by definition (as LoneJack points out). Life in the universe in addition to life here on Earth -- yes, simply because the universe is a mighty big (<- deliberate understatement) place and "mother nature's" rules of physics and chemistry apply everywhere. Has any of that extraterrestrial life visited Earth? Absolutely no evidence of that so far. Maybe 2022 will be the year? lol.

@cooper8828....Oh...that kind of weird. Saw that in the middle of the day living in Roswell. I'd go tell my mom...she'd say OH...such a big imagination. ☺ or...the military is testing new experimental planes. Maybe.....

I'm currently reading a book called "The Earth Book" by Jim Bell. I didn't know before the dinosaurs there was life...not all destroyed by a meteor hitting our planet. They called it the "The Great Dying", Permian-Triassic Mass Extinction. There's a LOT no one talks about. But is a fact. The next big meteor will take out ....us. Thus the cycle continues. We may not have enough time to develop inter-planetary travel.

Today most scientists/astronomers do believe that we are not alone and that just our 1 galaxy may contain at least 10,000 civilizations (according to the Drake equation). But the caveat is that none of them could reach the earth due to the vast distances between solar systems and the limiting factor of the speed of light. So for now we think that we are so smart that no one else can travel between the stars, nyuk, the book of physics is hardly complete, there are several more chapters to add.

Sure, why not? There is absolutely no way that this is the only planet in the entire universe that has life on it that can't leave their planet in a space ship of some sort.

No. Might of held out the possibility years ago but now with all the technology the idea is unfathomable.

vgkg - apparently you've never heard of ludicrous speed!

Garden pictures · More Info

I used to go to the UFO Expo West at the Airport Hilton Hotel near LAX in the 1990s, and I heard many, many speakers there and also bought a lot of books, etc. My conclusion was that UFOs are man-made but that the governments want people to believe that they are made by aliens, so that they can keep their war technologies secret.

In the 1990s, there was a consensus at the expos that aliens were going to finally reveal their true identities in the year 2000, but that never happened. A lot of the speakers at the expos had very interesting stories to tell, along with slide shows, but I have also read explanations of how people believe they have been abducted even though they have not. It is somewhat similar to the explanations of near-death experiences.

I do believe that there is other life in the universe, but I do not believe that aliens are visiting us in our dimension.

The most famously debunked UFO encounter involved Billy Meier in Switzerland, who took photos of models of UFOs and then claimed that they were from the Pleiades.

Here's what I believe about Roswell.

This is a paper written on, "How We'll React To The Discovery Of Alien Life". It cites "5" releases of facts, some now debunked and how people have reacted.

Quote: (1) the 1967 discovery of pulsars which were initially thought to be potential extraterrestrial broadcasts, (2) the 1977 Wow signal, which was also thought to be potential extraterrestrial broadcasts, (3) the 1996 discovery of potential fossilized extraterrestrial microbes in a meteorite of Martian origin, (4) the 2015 discovery of periodic dimming around Tabby’s Star which was thought to potentially indicate the presence of an artificially constructed Dyson sphere around the star, and (5) the 2017 discovery of numerous Earth-like exoplanets in the habitable zone of a star. Fifteen news articles providing contemporaneous media coverage of three of the above events suggesting evidence for extraterrestrial life were selected from various publications, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Time Magazine, and Science Magazine.........

They're worried about mass hysteria.

The pattern pretty much repeats itself, first an incredible sighting takes place, then there are public oooohs and ahhhhs - what could it be and mean? Then after a brief period of time when there is obviously no imminent threat that's when people begin to yawn and resume their daily routine lives. Wash, rinse, repeat....

Absolutely.

I like to think there are other creatures living in this vast world, be it man, woman, or animal. I like to keep an open mind.

Absolutely...we are here...why can't others be somewhere looking and/or thinking about

us and trying to see us? They are probably wondering why it took us so long to wonder

about Space and what it contains.

I know UFO's exist. Documented and everything. I believe we aren't the only life in the universe. I dont' think that just because I believe in life elsewhere that means UFO's here are alien in origin. A bunch of unidentified stuff that folks would like to be aliens really isn't, and a lot of it is just unidentified or misidentified by the person because they don't know. Or because they really want it to be an alien UFO instead of a mundane UFO.

In some folklore debating, it's brought up that folklore has morphed into modern UFO/alien culture. What once was common lore of some faries, cryptids, and deity constructs that is now unpalatable or unbelieveable, so has shifted to these things being aliens amongst more popular current weird.

Nope

I don't believe aliens have ever been here. They may be out there somewhere but too far away to visit or even have the capability to do that.

Do I "believe" in UFOs? No, absolutely not.

Nor do I accept anything else based on blind, unsupported "belief". They all seem to follow the same pattern - once someone suggests what's really a fictious and unsupported explanation for something, hordes of "believers" follow.

Are there things people have seen of unexplained or unexplored sources? Sure, of course. How could it be otherwise? Absent evidence of a source of something observed imaginations are free to run wild. Lonejack's comment above is spot on - the U in UFO stands for "unidentified", not "USE your imagination".

PS to beesneeds - I don't believe any evidentiary "proof" exists that has broad scientific acceptance. What do you have in mind?

Not sure what you mean by proof? Like proof that some people think mundane UFO's are really alien UFO's?

Or do you mean proof by my statement of I know UFO's exist and are documented? I see it on the regular on some weird forums, people posting stuff they can't identify. Sometimes those people don't know what it is or misidentify what it is, or want to believe whatever it is, it is for sure alien in nature. Sometimes those videos or photos can get explained and identified, and then they become identified flying objects. Sometimes even with a lot of people trying to figure it out, no one can really tell what it is, and then it remains unidentified and was documented. UFO does not necessarily mean it must be an alien craft.

As far as the folklore shift goes, that proof is a lot more off tangent. It's like the suppositions that the pyramids are for aliens, or bigfoot is really a trans-dimensional creature like faries. Sometimes it's proposed that bigfoot is actually aliens and they use transporters and thats why we never find one. Sometimes this stuff is more like translocating lore rather than lore mutations, and thats when you can see UFO's popping up with mirroring attributes once another spot becomes defunct for various reaons. Sometimes the lore mutations evolve along the lines of things like dancing lights- they are faries, or whisps, then maybe ghosts, and more recently aliens or alien craft. Deity forms like angels and succubi have also mutated to aliens to an extent as well. There's folklore books out there that cover some of this, but I mostly see these theories on forums like this is a forum.

My belief is belief, kind of hard to prove. But my belief that there is other life out there is because the universe is a big place, I can't imagine we are the only planet ever to have any life on it. Don't mean they have visted us... after all, we haven't visited them either, or even found them yet.

"Not sure what you mean by proof?"

The concept of "proof" is not nebulous. "Proof" is evidence or documentation or information which, after being subject to independent scrutiny, is agreed to show that someone's analysis, assertion or explanation of something is supported and reasonably likely to be true. But, sometimes changeable by someone else's work to advance a different explanation or approach. Proof needs to be based on something.

The absence of an accepted explanation doesn't open the door or increase the likelihood of any or all types of other unsupported guesses. Neil deG Tyson, a PhD in astrophysics, says in the brief interview linked below that he's perfectly fine with the state of play being an uncertainty. What are objects that are randomly seen? We don't know. Stop there.

Neil deGrasse Tyson weighs in on UFO reports - CNN Video

Are you trying to ask for proof that UFO's are alien in nature? Or proof that they are mundane? Or proof that some documentated things like some videos do contain things that are not identified?Or what? What documents are you asking me to supply here?

I'm not asking you or anyone else to supply anything, the experts say there is no evidence and no proof at this time. I bellieve them. I know apparent objects and apparent lights have been seen at different times and still and moving images exist. So what? To my knowledge, as of now there's no accepted legitimate or scientific evidence to explain the origin of what's been seen. Absent that, refer back to the U in UFO - unidentified.

Proof for an ET presence? That would require an ET, or at the very least a pound of alien flesh extensively analyzed by several independent laboratories around the world which come to an overwhelming and unanimous conclusion that it's alien DNA.....and even that would not convince many. There are only 2 others ways for "proof", and those are that the governments who know better come out with a planetwide proclamation that they've known about ET for decades, or the ETs themselves purposely land in capitals around the globe and publicly announce their presence....and that might have some sway, nyuk.

In other words - photographs, videos, landing marks, eye witness testimonials, encounters of the 3 and 4th kinds, etc., etc., etc.....none of that matters as far as proof goes.

Had to laugh at the title because to many of us crafters it means UnFinishedObjects.

Sure. To me, there's no question there are UFOs out there; lots of things seem scary or weird until we figure out what they are, then they seem normal.

The absence of proof or evidence - is not proof or evidence of anything someone decides to tee up as an explanation. Nor does it make any speculation reasonable or plausible. Speculation is speculation.

I'll assume this is not your area of expertise, vgkg, it's not mine either. Hopefully you accept there are others with more knowledgeable perspectives than you or I have, as I do, who are of this view. What you consider to be a short list of possible sources of evidence are your guesses, not more.

Neil Tyson is well informed, this is a subject in his field of expertise after all - take a moment to watch the video I linked above. Or don't, your choice. I've heard comments of his and of other people that were far more pointed but I didn't want to take the time to find them. That recent interview is enough exposure to what an expert thinks that anyone should need.

I do not believe, or disbelieve.

No one really knows and nothing would surprise me.

There are millions and millions of reports of UFOs, that doesn't mean they are aliens...just that they are unidentified. There have been many credible witnesses to sighting, not just crackpots. Likely they are experimental crafts...highly classified. I once asked my cousin's husband that worked for Lockheed Martin some years back if they had any alien crafts that they had found, in other words "are UFOs real?" his reply was the common joke that everyone that works in classified work says "I could tell ya but then I would have to kill ya!" HA! Personally, I have never seen anything in the sky that was UFO. I do know someone that is as trustworthy as they come that saw something that terrified her that she cannot explain. It hovered outside of her window when they were staying at an isolated deer camp. She described it as being large round light that hovered above the ground that made no sound. Certainly it was not like any aircraft that she or her husband had ever seen before. Maybe today it could be some sort of a drone but this was probably almost 40 years ago.

Yes Elmer I watched the Neil Tyson clip and have heard his opinion several times before on the topic. But your statement that "Neil Tyson is well informed, this is a subject in his field of expertise after all" is false, he is an astrophysicist, not a UFO researcher such as the late Dr Allen Hynek who was a skeptic before he joined Project Blue Book to investigate the topic. That being said I agree with Tyson that there is no definitive proof (an easy position to take) and as I stated above that "proof" will have to be undeniable, concrete, and void of any doubt (that pound of alien flesh).

BTW, Tyson's remarks about the pentagon's 3 videos may be a result from a "glitch in the hardwiring" is just his off the cuff speculation and nothing more. These 3 cases (out of 140 unidentified in the final report) also involved pilot visual and radar confirmation, and as per usual the Tyson conversation progresses towards the end into smirks and joking about the topic.

I do. When I was in my early twenties, my husband, myself, my mom and dad, went on a camping trip over a weekend. This was back in the day. We all slept on Army cots under the stars. It was a beautiful night and the sky was full of millions of stars. All of a sudden, one of the stars seemed to be coming down - my mom asked what in the world that was. We all four watched it getting bigger and bigger. No one was saying a word by that time. Then when it looked to be about the size of of beach ball, it stopped and all I can describe it as is "hovered" for who knows how long. None of us were moving or talking. Then all of a sudden, it shot outwards into the sky and finally, totally disappeared. And just in case you think we might have been drinking/imbibing, we were not - very religious at that time and did not partake of any kind of alcohol or other things. For a long time none of us said a word. Finally, I asked if they thought it was a UFO. My dad replied, "I'm not going to talk about it!" And he never would talk to any of the four of us about it. My husband rarely would talk about it either. I wish I knew what my dad thought. But if we started talking about it, he would leave the room. It was a very strange occurrence, and it sure made me a believer. To this day, I can still picture what happend as if it were yesterday.

If it is of any interest, we were camping on the Red River between Texas and Oklahoma.

Based on so many things that have happened in this country and around the world in the last 6 years, I have no doubt the aliens have landed.

"But your statement that "Neil Tyson is well informed, this is a subject in his field of expertise after all" is false, he is an astrophysicist, not a UFO researcher such as the late Dr Allen Hynek"

vgkg, please note I said "a subject in his field..." Hynek was also an astrophysicist (as a search reveals).

The Wiki article on him notes that he founded the Center for UFO Studies in 1973. This being nearly 50 years later, has any work produced scientifically acceptable evidence to explain what's otherwise "UNidentified"? Nothing I've heard of (though I don't follow the area, for reasons I explained). Is it reasonable that after so long there's still no substantive progress?

The question wasn't whether or not there is proof that they exist, but whether or not one believes in them........belief doesn't require proof (ask the billions of people who have religious beliefs). I think speculation is perfectly appropriate in this thread, since it's a thread about speculation (ideas, thoughts, beliefs).

I believe there is a possibility. Why not?! One night i watched an object that i thought was a plane going across the sky. It stopped completely, then shot straight up and disappeared in the blink of an eye.

Night time flights of helicopters can be disconcerting if its an observation run. Another source of low strange lights are tethered hot air balloons.

Elmer I was aware that Dr Hynek was also an astrophysicist/astronomer and that was a major reason Bluebook hired him so that he could explain and expose the many ufo sightings that could be resolved as misidentifications of natural and/or manmade objects. Unlike Tyson he was heavily involved in the topic for years and took it seriously, over time he knew there was more to it than just nonsense.

In general scientists do not like talking about this topic, the Tyson interview that you posted was way too short (less than 2 minutes) for any substantial discussion. The unsubstantiated comment he pulled out of his butt (glitch in the hardwiring) was totally ridiculous and quite frankly unprofessional and the interviewer should have called him on it. Tyson basically ignored the specifics of the 3 Navy pilots events/videos, he just lumped them all together as a "glitch" no matter the sum total of the radar, visual, gun camera evidence, and that the Pentagon had already said that these events were real as were the objects in question.

Let's face the stark reality, hardly anyone wants to talk about this topic, especially scientists (and apparently some journalists) who, if they actually took the topic seriously don't want to jeopardize their reputations and become the butt of "little green men" jokes. This topic does not have to devolve into rolling eyes and chuckles, if the Pentagon says that these objects are real and that they can easily out maneuver our best fighter jets then it should be taken very seriously.

I partially agree with your thoughtful comments, but only partially. I think people in the general field tire of UFO questions from apparently gullible "believers" who are disappointed when the "expert" doesn't share their "beliefs". I know someone who's an astronomer and he's told me that he's lost patience dealing with people who ask him UFO or life on other planets questions.

Here's something I heard once - take two boxes. Label one "Things I've learned to be true or untrue" and label the other "Beliefs I have". Write down all of your thoughts (not literally but for the purpose of this) and put them in the appropriate box. Keep everything you know or think in the box it belongs in and don't try to move things from one to the other. When you pull something out to think or talk about, remember what box it came from and expect others may keep that same item in a different box than you do.

A fabulous and very interesting example of this concept in practice can be experienced by listening to a captivating 10 episode podcast (recorded during classroom presentations) entitled "The Historical Jesus", by Prof Thomas Sheehan, from Stanford University. Sheenhan explores the historiography (rigorous historical academic investigation and research concerning) Biblical accounts of Jesus and his times. With some coverage of the Old Testament. The unbiased work done in the last 150 years suggests the assumptions carried over the centuries about the source of the material in the Bible and the events described are unsupported. Not unknown, but unsupported because of convincing evidence to the contrary. It's a most interesting tale, he explains the work done, contradictions investigated, and the factual bases for the conclusions.

Keep that thought in mind. Now consider that he also describes himself as a devout, practicing Catholic. A product of Catholic secondary and university institutions, up through his PhD, and a longtime professor at Catholic universities.

He repeatedly apologizes to those in class, reminding them that his intent is not to criticize or persuade them to drop any religious beliefs they have but rather to inform them of facts that have been unearthed from academic investigations. He says something like - "keep your beliefs, as I do. They need not be proven if they're important to you. The study of history is a matter of scientific investigation. This is a history class, not a religion class. Don't combine the two".

Available through the Apple/iTunes source for free. Very interesting and entertaining.

PS - later edit to add

I think there's need for a third box - things I know nothing about with certainty and don't pretend or assume otherwise

@Elmer J Fudd....you basically said what I tried to say...in much more detail...and eloquently I might add. I grew up with aliens among us being the norm.....yet I have no proof or personnel experience to back that up. ☺ I've honestly NEVER seen ANYTHING ....that suggests an encounter with an alien.

Back to OP.

While I absolutely believe in life elsewhere I have no reason to believe any other life form has been here. No reason for them to come so far as I can see.

So why come. What are the chances that life that evolved elsewhere in our vast universe would be compatible in any way with our planet? As an example We cant live where fish live and fish cant live where we live. You cant walk into an ocean and move in on a fish. We cant digest bark but porcupine can. Now we are in a universal sense major close genetically to a fish or a porcupine. Extrapolate that incompatibility to a universal degree and realize that any life from elsewhere is hardly likely to find us compatible or our environment. When you watch a movie or show about people traveling to other planets they end up in a place with grass and trees. How likely is that? Chemistry and physics are universal so far as we know though it is entirely possible that there are more properties than we can know or posit.

You could use the Star Trek fix of having some ancient ancient beings spread DNA all over the universe just because. It is a fun trope but a big ask.

^^^ Patricia, aliens are not required if the theory of Panspermia is true. It goes hand in hand with the rocks from Mars being found on the Earth. Last I heard NASA still stands by it's claim (which Nicole mentioned in a previous post) that a rock which was blasted off of Mars and landed on Earth contained fossilized evidence of microbial life. Similar space debris from other star systems could also spread DNA.

Elmer, this is how Ufology it works...

I never "got" the "I Want To Believe" poster that agent Mulder hung in his office. Who in their right mind would want to believe it?

We'll see what happens next, I doubt we've heard the last from AATIP......one of us has an I told ya so in his pocket ;-)

I don't know who or what "agent Mulder" is nor do I immediately get the drawing unless it's trying to show a dog chasing its tail. If so, I still don't get it.

When you say "we'll see what happens next", I'll leave it to you to stand watch. I don't have much interest in the area.

Panspermia is a sort of earth centrist view of life. I suspect life elsewhere is not DNA based at all. It might not require anything necessary for life here. We lack the imagination to envision what such a life would be like.

Panspermia is the opposite of an earth centrist view which implies that life started here on it's own. Our planet is just 1/3 the age of the universe (4.5 v 13.8 billion years) so there's been plenty of time for life to evolve elsewhere and then spread throughout the galaxy over time. The recent passing of Oumuamua through our solar system is an example of how interstellar debris could be the "seeds" of life.

Elmer I won't delve into those other than to confirm that it is indeed a dog chasing it tail.

During WW2 I worked at Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio.It was mostly lab buildings of one sort or another. We all wore ID badges,varying from "confidential" to "top secret." These gave us access to various labs and offices. My specialty was Aircraft Radios. Across the street was the Foreign Technology building. A special pass was required to enter. My roommate worked there, but I never heard her mention one word about her job. At times there were rumors about aliens being kept there. I have always doubted it but it shows how long the idea has lasted. We were all very careful not to disclose anything about our work, following the warning, "loose lips sink ships."

Seniorgal