I've never believed there have been alien visitors to Earth, so I had no hopes or fears relating to this new transparency. Did you?
May 8, 2026
"Pentagon releases dozens of UFO files offering transparency on 'alien and extraterrestrial life.'"
That's the headline from The New York Post, from a whole hour ago, so I infer that there's nothing too exciting there.
Posts
118 comments:
I am open to being convinced. I have seen and experienced some things I cannot explain.
Their attempt at distraction will fail.
“I've never believed there have been alien visitors to Earth, so I had no hopes or fears relating to this new transparency. Did you?”
No. I feel bad for Joe Rogan, though. With moon landings now real and UFOs fake, half his show is gone.
Maybe no alien visitors, but it is enjoyable to think about the possibilities. The film Arrival is one of my all-time favorites, followed by Contact. Sagan's book is better than the movie, however.
The best time to release UFO fiction was before the era of logarithmically increasing AI slop. They've missed their Overton Window by several decades.
The distances involved and the weird things that happen with time at high speeds make it extremely unlikely there will ever be an encounter between alien civilizations. I believe they are out there, I hope we will some day detect them, but we will never have a conversation with them.
I've never believed there have been alien visitors to Earth
How can you be sure? Maybe the aliens flashy-thinged you.
Even more than the extreme distance, I think the odds of the development cycles being in sync of 2 independent evolving civilizations making them able to communicate with each very remote. With the universe many billions of years old, many civilizations may have come and gone before the time humans on earth evolved to the point to be ready to communicate with them.
I consider the belief that aliens are here on Earth now to be a marker of an inability to reason. Akin to believing in astrology.
Spending lots of time in the SW deserts and along the Colorado River I have seen more than one unexplained flying craft. The largest was a triangle over San Bernardino in 1995. Was with other witnesses every time. None of us has ever "reported" them officially.
Star Wars and Star Trek and stories like that have filled our minds with the idea that getting to another planet is no harder than driving a covered wagon from St. Louis to Oregon. We have absolutely no fee for just how large the universe and how far it is just to the next star. Interstellar travel would require amazing amounts of energy and would take amazing amounts of time. Light travels around the world eight times in one second. It takes more than 4 years to get to the nearest star. Faster than light is impossible and even getting close would be ridiculously expensive.
Then there was the time in 1986 when a friend and I were in the Kern River canyon south of Lake Isabella. We stopped along the winding road to pee in the bushes. While urinating a triangular craft whizzed over our heads and crashed into the side of the mountain above us. Going really fast! We of course both said "WTF" or similar. Watched the brush catch fire and then continued on south down the canyon.
At the intersection with a major highway the Air Force MPs had already blocked off northbound entry to the Canyon and were letting cars like ours out one at a time. Two years later the local paper ran a tiny story about the AF losing a Stealth Fighter during testing two years before in that spot.
You can't swing a dead cat without hitting a space alien these days. People don't believe me, but they'll never actually try it. They won't even take hold of the cat.
That was in CA near Bakersfield, but nearer Edwards AFB as the crow flies.
What are the chances wokeness is an explanation for the "the great filter"? Every civilization that gets advanced enough to start reaching out to its neighbors goes through a period where Karens and scammers cancel and destroy everything that made it advanced enough in the first place in the name of DEIsm. This ultimately leads to their destruction before they can reach out through the vast reaches of space because all that's left is civilizations leaving Megrathian planetary voicemails explaining how wokeness Destroys Extraterrestrial Intelligence.
Leftists should be made to wear tshirts saying "I Am Why Aliens Won't Talk To Us".
My wild theory is that aliens are future humans who have enabled time travel but realize they cannot interfere too much with our history and thus operate on the fringes of our world. Hence why they never "land" on the National Mall.
This is mainly based on a biology course in which we discussed future evolution of the human species and what they would look like potentially thousands of years into the future and they looked a lot like gray f-ing aliens.
I maintain that if it ever demonstrated conclusively that extra-terrestrials have visited Earth, I will assume it also proves we live in a computer simulation where the laws of physics can be changed at the whim of the game player.
To paraphrase Baudelaire, "the finest trick the aliens played was convincing earthlings they do not exist."
In college, I worked at Dudley Observatory in Albany NY. We got a lot of "flying saucer" calls. Usually, they were Venus or something people saw on "Geraldo".
Once there were a series of calls that clearly were tracking a real object. You could follow the object's progress by asking where the caller was from. Callers said it was round and had a series of swirling lights around the perimeter.
It turned out, someone had tried to make an advertising display by stringing lights on an aircraft fuselage. From a distance, this looked like the classic image of a flying saucer.
We were excited for a bit but eventually thought which is more likely?
A) Someone put odd lights on an airplane.
B) The Martians have landed.
No, I never believed there have been alien visitors. Like many goofy beliefs, in requires the mandatory Vast Government Conspiracy.
On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, Americans bemoan the ineptness of government. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, they voice absolute certainty that same government can cover up the existence of intergalactic visitors, pull off a multinational moon landing hoax and pulverize 3,000 citizens in NYC without being exposed.
Saturdays and Sundays are reserved for yard work.
Its all stupid. Space Aliens. LOL. Fun to read SF or fantasy or whatever. But reality? No way.
Its about 4.2 light years to the nearest solar System - Alpha Centuri. People don't understand how really, really, really far that is.
The fastest man made object has gone 430,000 miles per hour. Or 120 miles per second. Light goes 186000 miles/second.
So if we could build a space ship that went
1,860 miles/second (vs. 120 for fastest man made object) it would still take us 400 years to get to Alpha Centuri.
How fast is 1,860 miles/second? Fast enough to go to moon and back in five minutes.
Or to the Sun and back in 27 hours.
“I've never believed there have been alien visitors to Earth, so I had no hopes or fears relating to this new transparency. Did you?” Nope!
It would be a colossal waste of space were we to be the only inhabitants of the universe.
"dozens"
Well, there are the biologists who calculate the odds of evolution of every organelle needed to have even single-celled life to be so vanishingly tiny - yes, even over the timescales we're talking about - that design is the only explanation, and that the more we learn about unicellular life, the even more vanishingly unlikely such a series of evolutionary steps becomes. That hypothesis doesn't exclude design of other forms of life, of course - maybe it even increases the odds our ever encountering any of those other forms of life to something possible. Without a Designer (Who wants us to meet), it seems to me that, for the reasons others have given here, there's no chance.
I always found it humorous that people thought NASA had alien technology. NASA has been slow to use the latest human technology. I remember in the 1990s, NASA through Boeing was considering flyback boosters for the Shuttle. They wanted them to land on the runway, but they couldn't make the additional weight of the wings workout to be economical. By the 90s, most cars had airbags. All would by the end of the decade. The technology relied on small G-rating sensors on the bumpers. Take a bunch of those sensors and line them up in 3 directions, and you could replace very heavy INS gyros, and you could put them in multiple locations on the rocket. Then a rocket would little additional mass could determine its state vector throughout the flight regime. The result was Grasshopper, which SpaceX flew successfully in 2013. <15 years later and SpaceX is ready to retire the Falcon 9, which can land on its own either by return to launch site or on a ship at sea. The entire NASA/Artemis II booster was dropped in the ocean never to be used again.
Extraterrestrial life? I’m having a hard enough time just wrapping my mind around the block universe theory!
"I’m having a hard enough time just wrapping my mind around the block universe theory!"
I've thought about this a lot (and continue to do so). I don't believe in the block universe theory.
From the hantavirus to the gulfwar ceasefraud to aliens to Epstein's "suicide" note, it's hard discerning the squirrels from the rabbit holes these days.
"I've never believed there have been alien visitors to Earth"
Then who did Will Smith slap around? Other than Chris Rock that is.
OM, I hear you, it is hard to believe but it does deal with the reality that the passage of time is not a universal constant.
This is what I think:
-- There are up to 50 sextillion (5 x 10 to the 22nd power) planets in the universe that could potentially sustain life, so it seems impossible that there's no other intelligent life out there. (But if there isn't, that's proof that an intelligent creator decided to produce the right conditions only on Earth for some reason.)
-- The vast distances of space mean it's likely that if intelligent life does exist on other planets, they wouldn't have the technology (even if it was far beyond our own) to travel here.
-- On the other hand -- if intelligent life does exist on other planets... and they somehow did manage to travel here... and if people at high levels of power knew about it... they would probably hide it from the rest of us.
Undocumented visitors.
@MJB Wolf, that story somewhat aligns with the theory some people have (me included) the government purposely hyped, or at least did little to discourage, various 'alien visitor' stories as cover for flight tests of advanced aircraft. It would also be be effective counter intelligence.
Advanced technology, on first contact, is indistinguishable from magic.
Those new videos are interesting though! Tiny UAPs.
It doesn't matter what I think about this, or what any of you think about it. It either is, or is not. And we may, in our lifetime find something that shows us that other life does exist and has visited here, or not.
What we know is that various ancient beings have sketched visitors seemingly from space. On the other hand, all people have sketched 'Gods' presiding over us.
I think there has to be other life. Has to be. Too many other galaxies, suns, and planets out there (as Sagan famously stated- Billions and Billions). As for the distance, any beings advanced enough to do interplanetary travel might have figured out how to manage space, wormholes, and diverging diamond interchanges. And as we're about to enter the age of quantum computing, I would quote Firesign Theater here: Everything you know is wrong.
But enough of me. Let's hear from The World's Foremost Authority.
One problem with space aliens. How do they know to come here? Were they just roaming around the universe at 10x the speed of light? Even if they were going the speed of light its quite a journey to spend 4 years on the off-chance that our solar system was worth visiting.
And if they were advanced enough to build space ship that go the speed of light, what does earth have that would make it worth visiting? I suppose it could be a "lets go visit those backward savages sort of anthropologist thing". Maybe they got a grant from a Non-profit on Plant xendu.
"OM, I hear you, it is hard to believe but it does deal with the reality that the passage of time is not a universal constant."
That's absolutely true (no pun intended), but I think the block universe comes about by stretching what special relativity says about simultaneity too far. Like the Andromeda galaxy too far. I think general relativity teaches us not to even attempt that.
@RCOCEAN II, it's odd disclosure is happening during a period of mysteriously increasing colon cancer rates. If you want to learn from the galaxy's most elite buttstuff disinformation experts, Earth is practically Starfleet Academy.
@Mike (MJB Wolf) --
It's publicly known that the eastern Sierra Nevada over to Area 51 was the secret military test area and a bunch of stuff DID happen there. Yes, they infamously shut down the area a couple times in the 1980s and drew attention per the Streisand Effect. There were also decades of daily staff flights from Southern California to Groom Lake (Area 51), and medical issues (cancer) that followed from the use of dangerous materials and open burn pits.
Area 51: Nuclear testing -> U2 -> SR-71 -> Stealth bomber -> Stealth fighter and way too much publicity.
None of this was UFOs as 'unidentified' at all. Just classifed, with firm "plausible deniability" until the 1980s and 1990s.
And don't get me started on the second law of thermodynamics being the source of the arrow of time! Another case of stretching what is true in a box to the entire cosmos.
Well, I married a Martian
And boy, am I sorry
Well, she came down from the sky
She couldn't stand the attitude there
She took human form, not bad
She seemed different
She had a European flair
And I said, "where you from?"
And she said, she said, "I'm from Mars"
I married a Martian
Her loving is different
Viva la difference
Every, every night
I married a Martian
I took her to Vegas
I dressed her in ermine
She had the time of her life
Though she called me Mister Right
I could sense something was wrong
She was hardly home at all
She'd keep telling me
She was doing studies of Earth
She had tendencies to flirt
And it really did hurt me
I married a Martian
Boy, am I sorry
I don't recommend it
To anyone in their right mind
RSM: "the galaxy's most elite buttstuff disinformation experts"
Now THAT would make a great masthead motto! CC, JSM
https://youtu.be/a2h_6q9B0Go
CJinPA said...
No, I never believed there have been alien visitors. Like many goofy beliefs, in requires the mandatory Vast Government Conspiracy.
That's the problem. After what the "Vast Government" did to Trump, I'm not sure if there ARE conspiracy theories anymore....
This plane:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_VZ-3_Vertiplane
generated regular calls to officials, as a UFO, back around 1960. There ain't no new thing under the sun.
Jamie: Well, there are the biologists who calculate the odds of evolution of every organelle needed to have even single-celled life to be so vanishingly tiny ...
Dissolving the Fermi Paradox
The Fermi paradox is the conflict between an expectation of a high ex ante probability of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe and the lifeless universe we in fact observe.
The expectation that the universe should be teeming with intelligent life is linked to models like the Drake equation, which suggest that even if the probability of intelligent
life developing at a given site is small, the sheer multitude of possible sites should nonetheless yield a large number of potentially observable civilizations.
We show that this conflict arises from the use of Drake-like equations, which implicitly assume certainty regarding highly uncertain parameters. We examine these parameters, incorporating models of chemical and genetic transitions on paths to the origin of life, and show that extant scientific knowledge corresponds to uncertainties that span multiple orders of magnitude.
This makes a stark difference.
When the model is recast to represent realistic distributions of uncertainty, we find a substantial ex ante probability of there being no other intelligent life in our observable universe, and thus that there should be little surprise when we fail to detect any signs of it.
This result dissolves the Fermi paradox, and in doing so removes any need to invoke speculative mechanisms by which civilizations would inevitably fail to have observable effects upon the universe.
Please. The correct term is "undocumented pilots".
The Byrds convinced me back in 1967... 🎶 Hey Mr Spaceman, won't you please mm take me along, I won't do anything wrong...🎶
No extraterrestrial UFO's, no second shooter in the Kennedy assassination, no Epstein black book of pedos, Biden beat Trump in 2020 (with the help of a lot of mail-in vote shenanigans), and Jan 6 was not an insurrection. I am certain that labels me as an anti-Truther, which I accept.
It's possible we are just one of God's many mistresses, and he put us far enough apart that we would never meet at the supermarket and cause a lot of drama.
From Allan Sherman in 1963:
Last night I met a man from Mars, and he was very sad
He said, "Won't you help me find my girlfriend, please?"
So I asked him, "What does she look like?"
And the man from Mars said, she's. . .
Eight foot two, solid blue
Five transistors in each shoe
Has anybody seen my gal?
Lucite nose, rust-proof toes
And when her antenna glows
Well, she's the cutest Martian gal
You know she promised me, recently
She wouldn't stray
But came the dawn, she was gone
Eighteen billion miles away
Her steering wheel has sex appeal
Her evening gown is stainless steel
Has anybody seen my gal?
How I miss all the bliss of her sweet hydraulic kiss
Has anybody seen my gal?
BarrySanders20, I agree with all that, and I'd like a hat that succinctly tells everyone I meet.
There needs to be a label for us.
In an infinite universe, there are infinite possibilities. It was "impossible to fly" until we proved that was wrong. "There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." We don't know what we don't know.
Transparent aliens. That's why we don't see them more often.
Yet there are still things which are more easily explained by there having been visitors from another world.
" ... so I had no hopes or fears relating to this new transparency. Did you?"
Not since I was about 12 years old.
wendybar said...
That's the problem. After what the "Vast Government" did to Trump, I'm not sure if there ARE conspiracy theories anymore....
I would never say government actors wouldn't try coverups. But the treatment of Trump was in the open. No hidden aliens there.
Maybe the competent military sightings are what's fake, so they can pretend we have alien technology that nobody else has been lucky enough to have fall on their heads.
So it's still just David Bowie.
Trump announces 3-day ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia May 9, 10, 11.
Requested by Trump. Includes prisoner swap of 1000 from each side.
Even if a super-advanced alien society were somehow able to subvert the laws of time and space to get here, would they really go to all that trouble just to anal-probe our rednecks and play hide-and-seek with our Air Force? You’d think they’d have better things to do.
I'm with OM on this. The physics preclude any meaningful speculation.
...any reports say it was Greg form his attic room with a flashlight and a whistle?
One late October night about midnight on a Friday,!I was at the intersection of the 138 spur and Tara Blvd heading south waiting on the light. I absolutely watched a substantial sized light come straight down, then make a 90 degree turn to the right, totally sharp and it was gone in an instant. I’ve never seen anything like it before or since. I ain’t saying it’s aliens…
How do we know the Visitors didn't make the Government sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement?
For something really cool about space and not at all about aliens, check out this video that compiles the recent Artemis II photos of Earth. Per the video, even NASA didn't know what they captured. Post-hoc data compilation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdO_g1S_MBU
Spoilers: Auroras, lighting storms, the Moon's reflection, and moving satellites.
Isthmus did an article years ago about the Roswell incident, posting that the weather balloon story was a cover for the alien spaceship story, which in turn was cover for a military crash involving nuclear material. Knowing that at one time, our entire nuclear arsenal was stored at Roswell AAF (now the Roswell Industrial Air Center) - both bombs, all we had at that time after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If more nuclear weapons or material were being transported and a plane went down, it would require just such a cover-up. I'm not convinced, but it is plausible.
Smilin' Jack said, "You’d think they’d have better things to do."
You forgot to mention bangin' Earth chicks. They're easy (or so the galaxy's been told...). It's all over the Buc-ee's stalls at their Crabs Nebula location.
There were also decades of daily staff flights from Southern California to Groom Lake (Area 51)
Southern California, are you sure? I suppose they might go up there from the Lockheed Skunk Works. It's no secret that there are daily JANET flights from Las Vegas to Groom Lake in unmarked white 737s.
There was speculation that the kook who shot up the concert in Las Vegas, and took some pot shots at the airport too, was aiming for the JANET planes for some reason. I don't believe that was ever proven, or if it was, it was not released publicly.
"I ain’t saying it’s aliens…"
...but it ain't aliens.
Extraterrestrials (I despise the use of aliens in this context) have taken the place of spirits, ghosts, and demons as the credulous explanation for something observed but misunderstood by the observer. In ancient times, if someone apparently healthy was suddenly taken ill and died, demons received the blame, satisfying the incurious while simultaneously buttressing orthodoxy. If a child wandered away and was never seen again, well then, the fairies took him. Nowadays, we explain the unexplained with extraterrestrial beings in their magical ships. Ghosts, elves, and the ufonauts, when will we outgrow our desire for them?
The universe is awash in information, most of it unavailable to us by the laws of quantum mechanics. Not every event will be adequately explained -- that's just how reality is ordered.
@Hassayamper --
Per my search just now to confirm or admit error, JANET was a later phase and did come from Vegas. The flights were initially from Lockheed Burbank. Both were true.
I don’t think any nuclear testing was done at Area 51. It does seem it was started for U2 and later SR-71 and stealth testing. However, I think the other secret activities were “Constant Peg” and “Red Eagles”, which was flying obtained Russian fighter jets.
Pentagon or pentagram? Where is the origin of these undocumented visitors?
I've never believed there have been alien visitors to Earth, so I had no hopes or fears relating to this new transparency. Did you?
Are we including Dinky Dau?
The Aurora is believed to exhibit nonlinear, exotic motion.
I have this theory that the most recent UAPs that are being seen by Naval Aviators and other credentialed observers are really just advanced prototypes of a deception system being secretly developed. Imagine if we could spoof our enemies in detecting (on radar) and seeing an object(s) that we could place anywhere, at any velocity, in any form. That would be an invaluable tool for the military.
If it were to be developed, it would, of course, ne most secret.
"Are we including Dinky Dau?"
You really think a race of Dinky Daus could build a warp drive spaceship?
"The physics preclude any meaningful speculation."
You can't prove a negative, that's logic. But I suppose the "meaningful" covers that. But a better formulation would be "The physics—as best we understand it—precludes...."
BTW, I know that AI loves the em dash, but you know what? There are cases where it absolutely makes sense.
How much misinformation was put out by the CIA and KGB on UFOs and ETs to have 'the other side' waste time and effort?
This is the sort of diversionary tactics that we used on our children. Bravo!
Original Mike said...
"Are we including Dinky Dau?"
You really think a race of Dinky Daus could build a warp drive spaceship?
What are the odds?
Disclosure day demands a new yard sign:
In my house, I believe
Orion slave women are real
They think my probe is sexy
They will love me, we will cuddle
We will make green space babies
As foretold by Roddenberry
Captain Pike can’t stop me
Why assume extraterrestrials would be more intelligent than earthlings? Perhaps universe if full of 'em but they have yet to invent the wheel, much less space travel.
Or, maybe extras invade normals and turn them into psycho killers, sadists, sociopaths, progressives etc.
Signals of unknown origin and fidelity. People want to believe.
If space aliens figured out how to go faster than the speed of light and paid us a visit, they could've at least left us a replicator or a tri-corder.
Well, and a cure for cancer would've been nice. But y'know maybe they're pompous stuck-up space aliens.
"Why assume extraterrestrials would be more intelligent than earthlings?"
Well, the ones building warp drive spaceships probably are.
JIMI-Although your world wonders me,
With your majestic and superior cackling hen(TRUMP)
Your people I do not understand,(MAGAS)
So to you I shall put an end(VOTE THEM OUT(
And you'll
Never hear
Surf music again( YOU CAN'T HEAR JIMI)
warp speed mr. &$%#@ let's blow this place, at the moment they 're LOST... DOWN AND UP IN HERE
Q for the win.
Then there's this...
Fungal strains in space spark worry
NASA found fungal strains that survive even its most stringent sterilization efforts, suggesting Earth microbes may already be living on Mars.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/fungal-strains-space-spark-worry-112456504.html
In case you don't have enough to worry about.
Next thing coming is mold in Uranus.
The pedophile alien files mention Trump over 2,000 times. This time we've got him for sure!
Science fiction retreats ever further into science fantasy. Interdimensional travel will breathe new life into sci fi, at least until scientists prove that we can't do that either.
"Next thing coming is mold in Uranus."
Aren't doctors supposed to keep that kind of stuff confidential?
Like spores from body snatchers
“the public can make up their own minds”.
So they’re egging on the public to turn into alien schizos to deflect from a disastrous war. that’s certainly a choice…
However, it seems a little odd that the growth of mass communications and high-resolution cameras in everyone’s pockets appears to have been almost inversely proportional to recorded sightings or wider evidence. You get loads of images featuring secret stealth aircraft, but the UFO spotting has not -- AFAIK -- risen significantly.
Enough circus now. More bread.
The aliens are among us (like the middlemen in highhiker guide planet)
Isn't there also another set of files that needs to be released ?
Still looking for that pony
Bagoh20 writes: "Trump announces 3-day ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia May 9, 10, 11. Requested by Trump. Includes prisoner swap of 1000 from each side."
This is the decree issued today by Zelensky:
DECREE OF THE PRESIDENT OF UKRAINE No. 374/2026
On the conduct of a parade in the city of Moscow
Taking into account numerous requests, and for humanitarian purposes as outlined in negotiations with the American side on May 8, 2026, I hereby decree:
To permit the holding of a parade in the city of Moscow (Russian Federation) on May 9, 2026.
For the duration of the parade (from 10:00 a.m. Kyiv time on May 9, 2026), the territorial grid square of Red Square shall be excluded from the Ukrainian weapons targeting plan.
Red Square grid coordinates:
• 55.754413, 37.617733
• 55.755205, 37.619181
• 55.753351, 37.622854
• 55.752504, 37.621538
This Decree enters into force on the date of its signing.
President of Ukraine V. ZELENSKYY May 8, 2026
Such great trolling.....
RCOCEAN II said...
“And if they were advanced enough to build space ship that go the speed of light, what does earth have that would make it worth visiting?”
Poverty tourism.
RideSpaceMountain said...
“… I believe Orion slave women are real…”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OPyC-UD-t8&list=RD2OPyC-UD-t8&start_radio=1
Somehow aliens who are able to travel trillions of miles through space to arrive at Earth, are incapable of flying through our atmosphere without crashing. And we are not talking about a single alien ship but dozens and dozens of them. Did they all have alien women pilots?
PoO is an obvious alias of alien extraction. PoW, really?
"Poverty tourism."
The Aliens are AWFLs.
I believe that.
why would aliens need aircraft, or bodies? Why assume they are similar to animals? Maybe they are microscopic.
"Maybe they are microscopic."
Maybe they've uploaded their consciousness into code.
It's not "billions and billions". It's trillions and trillions. There are numbers that the human mind cannot comprehend. I suppose any entity that could master space flight could master masking their presence here on earth.......I think most cosmologists and physicists have come to the conclusion that large chunks of "whatever" is incomprehensible. There's only a small portion of the observable universe that makes sense. Our minds are not equipped to handle most of it........God, extraterrestrials, world peace, whatever. They are all possible......The things you believe in now would get you burned at the stake in the middle ages. The writers, many of them, of our constitution believed in chattel slavery. What you now think about space travel is probably subject to change.
The thing I liked about the original Star Trek was that most of the planets they visited had sexy women who wore skimpy outfits. Such planets would be a tremendous impetus for space travel, but that's not the way it works. Maybe we have some rare ores or spices that make us worth the trip. Maybe McDonald's secret sauce cures cancer back on Orion 23 so now they visit us.
This result dissolves the Fermi paradox, and in doing so removes any need to invoke speculative mechanisms by which civilizations would inevitably fail to have observable effects upon the universe.
Yup - my comment perhaps doesn't make sufficiently clear that it seems to me that the same kind of analysis would lead us to believe that we are also far too unlikely to exist. Yet here we are!
(Yes, I know that statistics doesn't preclude unbelievably unlikely events. But Occam's Razor is also a thing, and combine the extreme unlikeliness of the sequential evolution of every component of, say, mitochondria, in just the right order and all in the same proto-cellular whatever-it-was, because remember that if any component fails the whole series has to start over evolutionarily, along with the components of every other organelle, in a just-right fashion, and also the fine tuning argument that even Dawkins said he found compelling against his will, and I'm A Believer.)
Pretend advanced civilizations have “territories” of space that they ride circuit over and they come to earth every 200,000 years or so. There’d have been nothing to see here last time.
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