What part of "No" do the UFOlogists not understand?
What part of "No" do the UFOlogists not understand?
Official answer after official answer, the UFOlogists still insist they know better.
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Last week the Pentagon held one of its regular press conferences, updating reporters on everyday things — like, you know, the killing of Yahya Sinwar, our B-2 stealth bomber attack on Houthi positions inside Yemen, and the revelation that North Korean soldiers are now fighting alongside the Russians in their war against Ukraine.
Just everyday boring stuff.
It was so boring, apparently, that a reporter from Task & Purpose asked the Pentagon press secretary giving the briefing, Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder:
"Given the news cycle, you could announce anything about aliens or extraterrestrial life, and no one would care; so I’m just going to take the shot. What do you got on UFOs, aliens, etc.?"
After a wave of soft laughter passed over the room, General Ryder answered:
"The truth is out there, Jeff,” (more laughter) “…and the truth is, we have no evidence to indicate extraterrestrial life has visited the planet."
That’s exactly what every person in any astronomy-related field (except money-grubbing loony Avi Loeb) has been saying consistently for the past seven years. And it’s also what the conclusion was in the report by AARO, the government’s official UFO investigation bureau as of today (they recycle through such bureaus pretty quickly). AARO went further, not only saying there’s no evidence, but calling the whole thing a bunch of bullshit promoted by the usual UFO personalities (that means Lue Elizondo and his buddies):
AARO assesses that the inaccurate claim that the USG is reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology and is hiding it from Congress is, in large part, the result of circular reporting from a group of individuals who believe this to be the case, despite the lack of any evidence. AARO notes that although claims that the USG has recovered and hidden spacecraft date back to the 1940s and 1950s, more modern instances of these claims largely stem from a consistent group of individuals who have been involved in various UAP-related endeavors since at least 2009.
Back in 1968, the government was compelled to do this again, and the Condon Report (1968) concluded:
As indicated by its title, the emphasis of this study has been on attempting to learn from UFO reports anything that could be considered as adding to scientific knowledge. Our general conclusion is that nothing has come from the study of UFOs in the past 21 years that has added to scientific knowledge. Careful consideration of the record as it is available to us leads us to conclude that further extensive study of UFOs probably cannot be justified in the expectation that science will be advanced thereby.
When that came out, the US Air Force’s famous Project Blue Book concluded:
(1) no UFO reported, investigated and evaluated by the Air Force was ever an indication of threat to our national security; (2) there was no evidence submitted to or discovered by the Air Force that sightings categorized as "unidentified" represented technological developments or principles beyond the range of modern scientific knowledge; and (3) there was no evidence indicating that sightings categorized as "unidentified" were extraterrestrial vehicles.
The fact is the UFOlogists just won’t take no for an answer.
Not only is there no evidence that aliens have ever visited the Earth, the laws of nature give us every reason to predict it is unlikely to ever happen. If blurry, low-data videos of UFOs are to be treated not as anecdotal and inconclusive but as inerrant proof of alien spacecraft, then what do they tell us? If we look at all such sightings on record, they fall into two camps:
Identified as something mundane and known
Not enough information to make any determination.
Yet the UFOlogists insist, based largely on (1) Internet videos, (2) TV shows on the pseudoscience networks, and (3) the puffed-up credentials of true religious believers like Elizondo, that aliens actively visit the Earth, and that’s all there is to it. Wow, solid proof, guys.
I can imagine the astrobiology community throwing their papers up in their air, abandoning decades of work, and saying “Well, whackadoodle UFOlogists have insisted upon what they wish were true, so we must accept that as indisputable fact.”
When every shred of evidence is against you, and every report ever compiled in history by relevant experts is against you, maybe it’s time to let go.
What's up with these alien visitors? They have the technology to travel here. They can bend the laws of physics and relativity. They get here and what happens? They are either crashing their spacecraft or doing joyrides and buzzing the tower. Is there an alien bar on the far side of the moon where they get drunk before showing up here? Or is it that they are teenagers who have stolen mom and dad's car. It just doesn't make sense, but then not much of the what the UFO supporters spew does.
When I was 18-20 UFOs were my big conspiracy theory belief, used to buy the magazines, they’d always cross-pollinate with the other stuff Pyramids etc, but I genuinely believed in UFOs, then you realise how big the universe is, even if faster than light travel is made possible, we’re a needle in a haystack. But mainly one thing you learn as you age is that humans are incapable of keeping secrets, if UFOs had been here, there is zero chance the people who know could have kept it a secret