UFO Theory.

I believe but my hubby laughs at me. I'm just of the opinion that Who am I to think we are the only intelligent life form in the vast universe. I figure the aliens took a good look at the fighting going on in this world and decided to look elsewhere for an intelligent life form.

The craze was so big back then that everyone and their brother was outside watching the skies. Now it's just become another one of those "things" that no one does anymore because they are to busy in the house sitting on their arses playing with xbox, playstations and computers. The only muscles people have anymore that are really getting exercise are their fingers and thumbs. ;D

Mark, they have been photographed. They are in league with politicians and we are the Winston Smith's of the present day! Dentists have been putting chips in our teeth, and the Electricals are using us for batteries.
I get sites from folks all the time who are seeing this as a conspirecy. Effectively, we are their energy source, an unlimited source from neural synaptic responses.
Go ahead, film an alien, send in your tape, get censored, get removed and have your family discredited. Then the thougth police grind you up in a blender, and you are processed for proteins. Before they grind you up, they put a cage on your head, fill it with rats, and give you an hallucinogenic.
Be careful, they have ships and they are underground. they have been preparing this for generations. Their world is dying, and ours is available. They are terraforming, creating a micro ice age from global warming and melting glaciers to eliminate the Gulf Stream, which will freeze Europe.
That is why it is so important to make tinfoil hats, and put 9volt batteries in our mouths! It shorts out the chips in our teeth, and the tinfoil hats prevent microwaves from altering our awareness of our surroundings.

Mark, IMHO the answer to your question is that aliens have never visited Earth, so there are no aliens around to photograph, only hoaxes to create.

To anyone interested in this kind of thing, I have to recommend a fascinating book, fascinating to me anyway. It is "Where Is Everybody?" by Stephen Webb, published in 2002. More fully, the title is "If the Universe is teeming with aliens...Where Is Everybody. Fifty solutions to the Fermi paradox and the problem of extraterrestrial life." It gets a bit scientific in places, but you don't have to be a scientist to get a lot out of it.

Basically the book explores possible answers to the paradox stated by the great physicist Enrico Fermi...which is basically the title of the book... if there are so many aliens out there, then where are they? Obviously it is much easier to signal someone at interstellar distances than to actually make the trip, so a lot of the solutions explore interstellar communications and the problems with that (huge energy demand to send signals effectively, maybe everyone is listening and no-one sending, maybe we are listening for the wrong signal, maybe we have received the signal and just don't recognize it, etc.)

The author looks at 50 possible solutions to the paradox, and explores each one as to how likely or unlikely it is. This includes the usual explanations such as intelligent life destroys itself before it has been around for long (or other disaster scenarios), the development of intelligent life is incredibly difficult, we are the only highly advanced civilization, and so forth. But there are some that I thought were really neat such as we are the first species to become capable of interstellar communication, tool-making among intelligent species is rare so most intelligent species aren't capable of interstellar communication or aren't interested in it, or we are part of an interstellar ecological reserve where other species have agreed to leave us alone and see how we do. And Mark would probably be keen on the solution that considers that humans have developed a very unusual type of mathematics compared to other species, which means our devices and listening techniques don't match those used in the rest of the galaxy.

Anyway, a very interesting read. I don't agree with his conclusion (and I won't spoil the ending), but the book arms you with good information to better draw your own conclusions.

Some may be hoaxes, but how does one explain when thousands of people in Mexico see the same UFO at the same time?

I have a difficult time believing that if aliens were visiting us that they wouldn't make their presence well and truly known. Well, a UFO is an unidentified flying object, and there are lots of objects in the sky that are unidentified, but I don't believe any of them are aliens.

I do however believe that life exists elsewhere, and with 100,000,000,000 suns in our galaxy, I think it is almost certain that several dozen of them harbour planets with life as advanced or more advanced than our own. But when you look at the energy requirements and technological hurdles needed to cover the huge distances from even the closest stars, it just doesn't make sense to make the journey unless you are certain of finding something worthwhile at your destination. Sure, you might send an unmanned (or unaliened) craft to take a look, but sending live bodies is a whole different ballgame. Just look at how we can send lots of probes to Mars, but sending a person involves at least a trillion dollars and hurdles that have yet to be overcome. Now imagine doing that for a place that is 100 light years away, or 100,000 light years distant.

IMO, it makes far more sense to make a connection with any alien society by some kind of radio transmission or laser communication, so we should be seeing hundreds (if not millions) of these before we could even think of seeing one alien who has actually made the journey. There are some intriguing possible SETI signals, but nothing that is certainly alien, and I find it very difficult to believe that our first contact with aliens will be in the flesh, particularly since there are some quite advanced SETI searches underway now that should pick up the much cheaper radio contact first. My 2 cents.

Hawke,

You are probably correct that if they could travel 100's or 1,000's or more light years to get here then they could also figure out how to go undetected. But I'd have to ask, why would they bother to go undetected? If they can send their species across the vast gulf of space, they would be so incredibly advanced compared to us, why would they possibly care that we were aware of their presence?

If we found something akin to mice on Mars, would we try to hide our existence from them?... I don't think so. So why would aliens with interstellar travel capability worry whether us lowly humans knew that they existed?

For all of history, humans have had a remarkably inflated view of our importance. Only a few hundred years ago, the Earth was considered to be the center of the Universe. Once we figured out that was not true, we then thought the Sun was the centre of the Universe, so we were pretty much still in there. Now that we are just circling an ordinary star in an ordinary galaxy, well, that's a bit disturbing to us humans. I don't think aliens capable of travelling between stars would consider us anything other than a lowly species with perhaps some potential, but nothing worthy of trying to hide from the "great" humans. ;D

Maybe the aliens know how many camcorders there are now and are just being more careful to avoid being recorded. Personally, I live with two cats...they hork up more alien lifeforms than I've ever seen in my life.

A lot of the sightings were probably government aircraft anyway.

We live in a rural part of Arizona. Situated between a few military installations. (Luke to the south, Nellis to the northwest etc.) and I always see stuff flying around overhead during the day. From F-16 to Stealth fighters to B1 bombers. As an aviation enthusiast I know where lights on aircraft are supposed to go and what sounds like what... but I have seen some pretty silly stuff flying around here at night! I realize I risk sounding like a kook but I don't think that they are aliens, I think they are our aircraft (built by aliens!) Haaa! Just kidding. (I think) Who knows?

Republican ideology is alien enough for me.
Gimme little green men any day.

Actually, the little green men landed in Louisiana after the hurricane.
But they left cause there was no leader to be taken to.

Rich