Science Sociology Psychology Issues Earth Science Ecopsychology Ufos Darwin Hawking

Science as a process, can reveal when, and if, UFO’s are actually visitors from beyond.  It also tells us for visitors to have come to earth they must have begun light years away.

A light year is a measure of distance, the distance it takes for an object to travel at the speed of light in one year. It is highly unlikely anyone traveling for generations of thousands of years has been in the neighborhood.  Language tells us something else.  The Unidentified Flying Object is by definition not identified.  It may not necessarily even be flying.  “Flying” is how the object may be described, but it could be falling, as a meteor, reflecting, as a light in the sky, floating, like a balloon, or bouncing, as an object off a rooftop.  “Object” itself is even in doubt.  Fog, lightening, mist, and more, have been described as objects, but some would argue with this definition.

 The speed of light is difficult for most lay people to grasp.  Only travel by wormhole, or some other advanced mechanism, would allow any visitors to make repeated trips, unless their calendars are unimaginably long, they are not mortal in the sense that we are, or they have somehow managed to “cloak” their planet from our prying astronomers.  Immortal, self repairing robots, could travel inter-galactically, but they had better be very hardy, and completely non-destructible.  We do know aliens are likely out there, but we have little proof they have come here.

The science of Psychology tells us that humans are exceedingly self delusional.  This does not mean humans are bad, or liars.  But we tend to believe our senses and our brains will attempt to make sense of any mystery.  Our imaginations are greatly, almost fanatically, invested in knowing we are not alone, because it helps us organize our thoughts about creation and the creator.  Proof would be so great to have.  Think of whether you have ever heard of a human believing in something “crazy.”  If you are a Hindu you may think that NOT to believe in an elephant or monkey god is crazy. If you are Christian, you may think TO believe in them is what is crazy.  If you are an atheist, you think most humans are crazy.  If you are under four, you may well believe in the tooth fairy, or Santa Claus, but if you are over four, and still believe that which your family and culture taught you to believe, you are just not thinking for yourself.  Every four years we elect another politician on promises of prosperity and peace.  It’s not that we are just delusional; we are also optimists as a survival necessity.

It has been shown in repeated studies that humans are hopeless as eye witnesses, yet testimony is still allowed in court, and innocent people have been executed, historically. We also easily live in denial.  Many people refuse to believe in Evolution, Geology, or Global Warming.  We will believe what we want to believe, even if it kills us, and for some people it does kill them when they bury their heads in the sand to drink the  Kool Aid;   to really muddy up a cherry metaphor.

Throughout history, there have been drawings and carvings of what look to be ancient astronauts.  There have also been drawings of leprechauns, fairies, dragons, satyrs, the death star, Barney, Obama with a Hitler-stache, mermaids, moons of green cheese, Tele-tubbies, Kittehs thatz wants cheezburger, and Lady Ga Ga.  Oh wait, we’ve just learned that last one is real. 

What about carvings of space-craft and ancient batteries?

Check the last 50 years of Happy Meals toys and see what archaeologists will think of them in ten thousand years.  They will likely think, “Wow, they wasted petroleum on things that must have extreme value and meaning we don’t fathom! The point is, humans have always imagined wonderful things. Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. We are open-minded and ready to examine all evidence.

UFO’s exist of course.  This is true, simply because we can not identify everything we see in the sky.  It is another thing altogether to think we are being watched, kidnapped, poked, prodded, and bred.  There are nearly seven billion people, there is no need to breed us.   We are quite adept at it, so much so we are threatening our own planet.  People do “go missing.” But this is usually with non-fantastic, mundane evidence.

Stephen Hawking has recently been reported to say we need to colonize space to survive. Since we have millions born daily, how many must we launch daily? And at what cost, fuel ability, raw materials, and so on?  We have two hundred years, it has been suggested.  That is less time than we have had Darwin, and we can’t even agree about facts he taught us, but somehow we are going to get smart enough to agree to  launch more than a million people every week to colonize, and take water, plants, fuel, to last thousands of generations?  We can do amazing things, but if we can do that, I will believe in anything.  Ad Astra.