Exactly, MigBuster. We have no proof, one way or another. But things are more interesting when you consider they might exist.

This blue marble is a lot blander, boring and scary if we latch on to the grim notion we're alone. And some dictatorial nutbag in some nation somewhere is hovering his finger over a red button that could unleash global thermonuclear war, destroying this precious treasure...

Nothing but dust and rocks and blazing embers, swirling around the cosmic black-hole drain.

I'm not sure of your point? Are you of the opinion there probably is life elsewhere or being sarcastic?

If there are trillions of stars out there let alone planets then surely it is not down to some to prove there is life out there when no one can prove there isn't.

Ah I see. The absence of evidence isn't the evidence of absence.

I have zero problem with people saying "there might" be life out there outside of Earth since we currently do not have the capability to search the entire universe for signs of such intelligent life.


However, firm belief in the existence of something in the absence of hard empirical evidence proving such existence is what we call "faith" isn't it? In that sense belief in extra-terrestrial life isn't that much different from belief in a "god".

Good post. Most of it I agree with. Except I've not seen a video of Jesus or God where the Navy has admitted they have no idea what they've seen. I wouldn't say the video evidence is empirical like you say, but it's more than I've seen that could prove a God.

Meh, kinda. In this case, I think that much of the weight would lie in the probabilistic aspects of the known or "proven" aspects of the problem. We know intelligent life can exist. Telescopic exploration of space reveals there are thousands of galaxies, each in form with what we are able to observe quite accurately, down to determining the types of stars likely in each region of those galaxy types, and from there the stars which have a chance of supporting a habitable Earth-like planet.

If there 400 billion stars in our own galaxy, and we presume only 1,000 of those could harbor an Earth-like planet... Multiply that times maybe 5,000 or 10,000 observable galaxies. That's what... approaching 10 million potential earths?

And of course that's only earth-like worlds and the life-forms they can support. Supposedly there is argument that ammonia type worlds (of course toxic to humans and most earth life) could harbor it's own life, but I've never studied this. How many such worlds could that be?

Granted, even with 10 million earths in the universe... It's still possible to have only ONE with intelligent life, meaning we are alone in all the universe. But given this kind of scale of what we know to this point, I'm not too bothered with someone having a high hope or even asserting that there *IS* life beyond our planet. The numbers make it certainly within the realm of reality.

I won't waste typing tons on another more important part of the topic... That if a distant signal is discovered by telescopic observation, with undeniable signs of life, the reality that the observed signs of that life may actually be millions of years old. Did that life survive that millennia of millennia it took for us to find them? Could either they or us survive at minimum double that much longer *again*, until we make contact? IMO those are some very long odds, indeed.

Agreed with adlabs. It's the sheer mathematical probability that suggests to me that life exists beyond our own planet. For me, it seems a bigger leap to assume it doesn't than to assume it does.

Assuming that life exists is not really an issue. As others have pointed out, it is statistically likely. Assuming they are frequently visiting our planet, given the size of the universe, is statistically unlikely.

Or believing in no God, for that matter.

That is, unless they put us here in the first place...

Earth, the giant terrarium and experiment. Maybe we really should be worried about the mice.

What if they are not from space but from right here ? how many species we only recently found? how many times we think we know our own history but a acidental dig or geographical morphing reveals ruins of old that change or perception and time scale of our civilization progress ? what if we are the failed ones, left over rather the apex predator we believe to be.

A microbe that has no known earth DNA has been found. Maybe we are just lab rats.

OK, maybe I misunderstood what you were trying to say, or maybe we just interpreted cichlidfan's post differently. I took it to mean that a hummingbird can perform certain "maneuvers" because of how it's "built," allowing it to fly in different ways than jet aircraft, but still adhere to physics. Looking at the footage on the CNN link in the original post, I don't see any movement that I would compare to that of a hummingbird. The closest is the end of the second video on that page, where the object moves quickly out of frame to the left. The text in the article and overlaid on the video says it moved to fast for the pod to follow, but I didn't see any official statement to that effect. But even if that were true, it would only show the object accelerating in one direction very quickly, something some unmanned aerial vehicles do all the time (missiles).

When you see stuff flying around without any reference, and from another moving object, it is difficult to accurately discern motion. If the FLIR pod was quickly moved to the right, it would produce the exact same image that we saw in the video, even if the object wasn't moving. Without some sort of solid, static reference, I don't think we can really make any definitive statement about how these vehicles were moving, but maybe there's other video that I missed that has that.

I think when you combine a smaller aircraft that has no pilot, with a video from a moving vehicle that has no fixed reference point, you can easily get footage that looks like it's doing impossible maneuvers without it actually performing impossible maneuvers.

This is the problem with people - a VERIFIED and UNIDENTIFIABLE thing was observed, and all people do is go to one extreme or another...

What we've got here is an unanswered question - and none of us have the answer. The far worse issue is there's people in power who'd not like any answer to be made public.

If it's of terrestrial origin, well "someone" screwed up in terms of secrecy...

If it's not, same thing...

If any truth is found it'll be suppressed - in either of the above scenarios...

YOU ARE NOT INFORMED.

what missiles you know keep up pararell with a jet then bolt sideways without any heat exaust or trails, i`m curious.

I wasn't saying this was a missile, I was just pointing out that accelerating quickly in one direction is not something that violates the laws of physics, and is actually done all the time by an unmanned vehicle or device. Can you show me any video that clearly shows these vehicles violating the laws of physics?

have you ever seen a failed rocket launch ? they break apart simply by the torque force, if any plane/rocket/drone were to make the same sudden maneuver it would break apart like confetti

You guys are hilarious. All I meant was that a hummingbird does not need to understand the physics of flight in order to do what it does naturally. Mr. B might be well educated but that does not mean he is correct.

humming birds don`t fly at 1.915 km/h !! they would break their neck if they did the same movement at that speed.