[quote=nostradamus]Sad. While Veteran Astronaut claims alien visits makes a great news headline, the most likely truth– 77-year-old suffers from dementia, is victimized by con artists— is somewhat more “human”.
The closest solar system to our own is over 100 light-years away. Do people think an alien species evolved, developed the technology capable of crossing that gap, and traveled 100 light years to visit a bunch of superstitious, destructive monkeys? The aliens came to give us technology?
Well, truthfully, the closest star is only 4.3 LY away, and there are thousands of stars in the 50-60LY radius sphere which our radio transmissions possibly could have been picked up in (given very advanced technology, and an alien species which cared about discovering neanderthals).
The closest planetary system we know of is only 10.5 LY away, but given that at our level of technology we can only discover planets that are both massive and very close in to the star itself, that’s not saying much (our own solar system, for example, would be undetectable to us at our current technology).
That being said, I agree with the spirit of your post. It’s very very unlikely that an alien species has visited the Earth for several simple reasons:
1) only a tiny fraction of the galaxy could have noticed us yet, since we only began pumping out radio waves a half century ago, and it’s simply unlikely that if anyone is out there, they’ve noticed us yet.
2) Any alien species with the technological capacity for travelling between stars is so incredibly advanced from us that we’d only notice them if they WANTED us to notice them. We are, after all, not talking about a LITTLE technological gap here – we’re talking about a species which is so advanced that they can bridge the enormous gulf between stars just to say “Hi” to a bunch of neanderthals (do you think Christopher Columbus would have come all the way to the new world just to talk to some apes?). Moreover, unless they were INCREDIBLY lucky enough that their civilization started off in the incredibly tiny region of the galaxy which could theoretically have heard our radio transmissions, we’re talking about a civilization advanced enough to monitor a good chunk of the galaxy. This isn’t a Hawaiians vs. Captain Cook gap we’re talking about here. This is a 2 year old with a rubber sword against a stealth bomber with a 50MT nuke technological gap here.
3) How likely is it that, given 1 & 2 above, that an alien species would be noticed by the US Government and covered up successfully? If the US Government noticed them, it’s because they wanted to be noticed – and if they wanted to be noticed, chances are we’d all know about them by now. Sorry, but I don’t give any credibility to the idea that the aliens are in cahoots with the US Government to prevent global panic (if that was the case, why even let the US Government notice them in the first place?) Besides, while I’m sure there would be a lot of initial shock, I doubt there’d be worldwide hysteria about it.
With all that said, it is still certainly possible that technologically advanced aliens do visit – but I consider it unlikely, and as long as the main evidence that is trotted out for this theory consists of testimony from tinfoil hat type folks, I’m unlikely to change my opinion much.
