UFO

Most recent composite headline from a combination of news outlets and press releases: "The U.S. Military confirms the videos are real".

Far from what used to be doctored images in the past, or, at the very least,  some were grainy pictures from dubious sources, these were taken by highly trained military pilots.  Even more intriguing is that these were released by no less than the Pentagon - the seat of the U.S. military. It must be noted though that the videos were all taken about four to five years ago.  The first question most folks ask is "Why were they released just now?"  Actually, "Why release them at all?"  After all, the government had been silent for decades since the first rumors or "reports" about UFO's surfaced.  We can go back to the 40's and 50's when articles and "eye witness" accounts first came out.  Then in 1968 Swiss author Erich Von Daniken released his first book, "Chariots of the Gods". Not for very long thereafter, fans across the world were treated to more books, TV shows, even conferences and discussions among both "experts" and noted UFO "authorities".  A new word was coined.  Ufology. And Ufologists who dabble in the "study"  of unidentified flying objects.

Below: Photo taken by an amateur photographer

Here are a few more questions:

1) As headlines go, why is there very little staying power for these stories?  They grab the public's attention for a few days, then the stories vanish as quickly as the mysterious flying objects themselves.

2) Why are there no credible forensic evidence of any kind at all? For example, why are there no alien materials like some sort of exotic metals or residue of any kind related to propulsion or construction. (Area 51, notwithstanding, no bio-specimens or DNA either) 

3) Aside from the visual images, why are there no audio recordings whatsoever?  All UFO's apparently emit no sound at all.

4)  Are alien abductions to be believed?  Whatever happened to all the alien abductees? 

There are many more questions than just those four - obviously.

The idea that we can be or had been visited by alien entities in spacecrafts that defy human technology does not seem that implausible because of the following logic.  In the vastness of the universe, it is estimated that there are trillions of galaxies, each with an average of  100-200 billions of stars.  Each of those stars is in reality  not unlike our sun and likely to have planets orbiting it, structurally no differently from our own solar system. Our closest galaxy neighbor - the Andromeda - may have a trillion stars.  A low ball estimate as to the potential number of habitable planets like our earth in just the Andromeda and our own Milky Way is mind bogglingly high, let alone in the entire observable universe. If just for those assumptions to work with, we are told that it is beyond any doubt that we are not alone.

However, until such time that one of these aliens do land somewhere, perhaps on the south lawn of the  U.S. White House or right in front of the Forbidden City or next to the Kremlin, or some meadow in Katmandu or Luneta Park in Manila, and then declare the famous science fiction cliché, "We come in peace" or a reiteration of, "Take us to your leader", it is also plausible that indeed we are really alone.

 

Then again, this could be how it will happen,

 or

The other argument used is that for all the galaxies, stars and other cosmic structures around the entire observable universe, where our earth is circling around an average-size star that is tinier than one millionth the size of a sub-atomic particle if the entire universe were reduced to the size of the Milky Way galaxy, surely all of these are not not just for us alone.  We cannot conceivably believe that there are no other life forms elsewhere. But then, why not?  Why can't the other statement be true as well?  

I would like to use a different argument which in essence simply says, "We might as well be alone".

A while back I made up an analogy about an amoeba on Lake Tanganyika in Africa.  It is the longest fresh water lake and the second oldest in the world, 410 miles long,  oriented north/south in the African continent.  First photo below is the lake and by the next photo, it is merely an invisible sliver lost in the entire continent.

One day, my favorite amoeba at the northern edge of the lake pondered - we need to give it the ability to think for this to work -  so, it asks, "What's out there towards the southern end of the lake"? It can't know and the idea that it can someday get over to the opposite end  would exceed the limit of its most optimistic imagination (Lest you forget, we gave it the ability to think). With a life span of just two days, it will not make it but for a few meters, let alone even get to either the eastern or western banks of the lake.  We smile at the two-day life span of the amoeba but our own life  relative to the entire cosmos,  can be bracketed to perhaps within just  a fraction of a microsecond, if we were to scale down the universe to the size and age of Lake Tanganyika.

It is not hyperbole, of course. Take Alpha Centauri, closest star neighbor to our sun. It takes its starlight 4.2 years, traveling at 186,000 miles per second to reach us.  Using the fastest spacecraft we've ever produced, it will take us 137,000 years to get there.  Multiply that speed to a hundred times faster, without worrying about how much payload of fuel it would take and what physiological effects it will have on the space travelers, it would still be a few thousand years of one way travel.  

Forget the nearest galactic neighbor - the Andromeda. Light from it takes 2.5 million years to reach us and, vice versa.  "We", humankind, if we can last long enough, will see the day 4.5 billion years from now when both galaxies will meet up for a spiral embrace in one colossal cosmic collision (can't resist the triple alliterative phrase).  Still, we will not get to any of its stars or to any of our own neighboring suns, even  if they were like swirling desert sands disturbed by a Saharan sirocco. No two stars will collide because there will still be vast distances between each of them.

And that my dear reader is the reason why we might as well be all alone.

That still begs the question. What were those mysterious crafts caught on camera or seen by witnesses, some of whom were actually credible accounts?

1) Before the world first knew of or seen the first stealth fighter, prototypes had been in the works for perhaps two decades earlier. Any eye witness who saw the prototype take to the air then (they needed to be flown "under wraps"), with one weirdly unfamiliar shape and barely a trace of exhaust, would have interpreted it as "alien".  Any new super aircrafts in development today would be wrapped in secrecy that even much of the military will be clueless, including pilots.  Take the photo of the B-2 stealth bomber below.  Does it look like a regular airplane?  Remember the sightings of triangular-shape alien spacecrafts a while back?

2) "Experts" tell us that some of these aircrafts fly at speeds and maneuvers that no human pilots can survive.  What about drones? Below is the pilotless Northrop Grumman X-47B which can land and take off from an aircraft carrier.  I'm sure it will be able to do death defying maneuvers that no human pilot can survive.   

Other sightings have been ruled natural phenomena that played tricks on the human imagination.  The rest remain under the category of "Unexplained".

Where does that leave the Idle Mind?  A philosophical and even spiritual discussion will take up more time.  They can  best be reserved for another musing.

Therefore, short of a press conference between our world leaders and an alien representative, I will have to say that UFO's, as in extraterrestrial vehicles, aren't real in one sense but that they could be in another plausible sense as in man-made as-yet-to-be revealed technology.  To quote Mrs. Slocombe in the erstwhile British TV sitcom, "Are You Being Served", when making a point, she would say,  "And I am unanimous with that".