Most interesting UFO incidents thread

Reeco said:
I know for a fact that's happened.

Edit - Unmanned, of course.
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Which hopefully means that your answer to tsig's question "So you're saying that some race, somehow, somewhere managed to travel from their planet to another one?" is actually "No"?

Please don't reveal yourself to be yet another semantic-driven, hair-splitting Rredefiner.
 
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Reeco said:
I believe there are alien craft. I believe that they have been witnessed by sentient beings that couldn't identify them. I actually believe this is less of a wild statement than "they don't exist".
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"They don't exist" is not a wild statement at all. There is no evidence to confirm that UFO reports are actual alien spaceships. They are simply objects people could not identify. Knowing what we do about how humans misperceive objects, it is not that far a stretch to suggest that most, if not all, of the unexplained reports are probably misperceived objects or hoaxes. Therefore, to suggest that UFOs are not alien spaceships (which is what I think you mean by "they don't exists") is a valid hypothesis. Until somebody can falsify this hypothesis (misperceptions/hoaxes are the likely answers to these reports), it is the best hypothesis available to the UFO question and requires no unreasonable assumptions (i.e. aliens from other planets, multidimensional beings, hollow earth people, nazi spacecraft from the south pole, etc.).
 
I think I've been misunderstood, so let me try again.

I believe alien spacecraft exist, on the basis that I don't believe the human race is the only race in the universe that has put a craft into space. It is a belief in the sense that the other option is to say "I don't believe alien spacecraft exist because there is no evidence for them". I personally find this a wilder statement than my statement, given the size of the universe and how little of it we have explored. I mean, we're not talking about something extraordinary here - it is something that the human race has managed and something we know for a fact is possible.

If anyone is hanging on the word 'belief' here, please don't. This is not the same as believing in God or ghosts, because we have a working example. Us. All I'm saying is I think it's more likely we are not the only space-travelling race in the universe than we are. So I don't say things like "alien spacecraft don't exist".

I think (believe, whatever) it is very unlikely that anyone, anywhere in the universe has seen an alien spacecraft - that is, a spacecraft created by a race they don't know about and from another planet. It may have happened but the chances are small. If I had to put money on it I'd say "no".

On the last point, I'll repeat myself once more:

I don't think that an alien spacecraft has ever visited Earth.
 
Akhenaten said:
Which hopefully means that your answer to tsig's question "So you're saying that some race, somehow, somewhere managed to travel from their planet to another one?" is actually "No"?

Please don't reveal yourself to be yet another semantic-driven, hair-splitting Rredefiner.
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Nope, the answer isn't "No". It's "I don't know, but I doubt it".
 
Reeco said:
Akhenaten said:
Which hopefully means that your answer to tsig's question "So you're saying that some race, somehow, somewhere managed to travel from their planet to another one?" is actually "No"?

Please don't reveal yourself to be yet another semantic-driven, hair-splitting Rredefiner.
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Nope, the answer isn't "No". It's "I don't know, but I doubt it".
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My straw man and I would like to apologise.

:footinmou
 
Reeco said:
I believe alien spacecraft exist, on the basis that I don't believe the human race is the only race in the universe that has put a craft into space. It is a belief in the sense that the other option is to say "I don't believe alien spacecraft exist because there is no evidence for them". I personally find this a wilder statement than my statement, given the size of the universe and how little of it we have explored. I mean, we're not talking about something extraordinary here - it is something that the human race has managed and something we know for a fact is possible.
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I think you miss the whole point of this thread then. Of course, it is possible that an alien race on some distant planet has been able to go into space the same way we have. However, this topic is about UFOs. What I (and I believe others) am saying is that it is a reasonable conclusion to reach that UFO reports are probably due to misperception/hoaxes. The ET hypothesis (ETH) that they are alien spaceships is not a better hypothesis simply because there is no evidence to support this other than people claim to see aliens and alien spaceships.
 
Astrophotographer said:
I think you miss the whole point of this thread then. Of course, it is possible that an alien race on some distant planet has been able to go into space the same way we have. However, this topic is about UFOs. What I (and I believe others) am saying is that it is a reasonable conclusion to reach that UFO reports are probably due to misperception/hoaxes. The ET hypothesis (ETH) that they are alien spaceships is not a better hypothesis simply because there is no evidence to support this other than people claim to see aliens and alien spaceships.
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I don't miss the point of thread. Other than that, I totally agree with your post.
 
Is it just me, or are the interesting incidents those where something new is learned from the research that uncovers boring "mundane" identies for the previously unidentified objects?
 
Tomtomkent said:
It is probably worth clarifying what you mean.

It is probable there is at least one other life supporting planet.
It is possible that planet has spaceships.
It is improbable those spaceships would be capable of flying between star systems or resemble flying saucers.

If you mean "they do exist" as in "flying saucers" or "alien civilisations that have mastered hyperspace" then you will have a lot of working to show how you came to that conclusion than if you think there is a possibility of single celled life somewhere out there.
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Why is that improbable?
 
Aepervius said:
I am not even sure that statement stand. As far as we can tell, the only itnerstellar travel we could come up which make sense, are generation ship and ark ship. Which is as far away as what most "UFO=alien" contender would like to use as itnerstellar travel possibility.

Ark ship or generation ship are definitively not something you would be able to hide that easily, especially with respect to breaking time, travel time, within boudn of scientific plausibility.

So yeah, I call dibs on that one.
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As far as we can tell, Earth is the only planet in the universe with life. I wouldn't presume to rule out fast interstellar travel. If you get up to high enough relatavistic speeds, you don't need to bother with ark or generation ships.
 
Sideroxylon said:
No, the default position is that visiting alien space craft do not exist. This is the null hypothesis and we should stick with that until evidence disproves it. Saying they do exist is the "wild statement" as it lacks evidence.
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Why do you think that's the null hypothesis? Until we get some hard numbers to plug into the Drake Equation, I don't think we can say at all whether it's likely/probable/improbable that alien space craft have visited us. Too many unknows at this point.
 
Fudbucker said:
Why do you think that's the null hypothesis? Until we get some hard numbers to plug into the Drake Equation, I don't think we can say at all whether it's likely/probable/improbable that alien space craft have visited us. Too many unknows at this point.
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How many known alien craft have visited the Earth?
 
Fudbucker said:
Why is that improbable?
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Because we know the distances between stars.
Because we know that the maximum speed any object can achieve is limited to C.
Because we know the amounts of time required to travel those distances with that maximum speed.
Because we are aware of the fatigues and stresses put on materials in the absolute zero and total void of space. For that minimum amount of time, measured in decades, required to travel between stars.

And that makes no assumptions of the longevity or biology of a pilot.
 
Fudbucker said:
Why do you think that's the null hypothesis?
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Because we are discussing something not proven to exist, with no reason to assume it exists nor to assume humanity has encountered it.

Fudbucker said:
Until we get some hard numbers to plug into the Drake Equation,
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Which is why we use the null hypothosis. To get those numbers. Untill the null is overcome the number of samples available for you to study remains 0.

Fudbucker said:
I don't think we can say at all whether it's likely/probable/improbable that alien space craft have visited us.
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Sure we can. Untill a viable evidence is produced that aliens have visited us at least once, we can say it is unlikely and improbable that they have visited us. We do not even have the oppertunity for this to be vaguely probable because we have no viable method for travelling between stars. If you want to produce some evidence we can reasses that position.

Fudbucker said:
Too many unknows at this point.
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Again, this is why we have a null, and this is largely what makes it improbable.
If you want to increase that probability, you need some unknowns to be known.
 
Fudbucker said:
:eek:

That's taking the Rare Earth hypothesis a bit far, don't you think?
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Not at all. There could be many millions of alien civilisations exploring their own solar systems. Billions upon billions of them.

How rare Earthlike conditions may be is not the factor that makes this unlikely.

The zero evidence for their having visited us is the factor that makes this unlikely.

The physics involved in interstellar travel makes this improbable.
 
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