Alien Life On This Planet

Some speculate that if there is intelligent LifeOnOtherPlanets with WarpDrive or similar capability then there may be some of these visitors setting up (or already set up) a permanent presence on this planet. For example there are reports of underground bases or even underwater ie http://www.orbwatch.com where these visitors frequent for whatever purpose. Perhaps the equivalent of our highway roadstops, or mining, or genetic processing etc. An interesting book about such presence in a small town just north of New York city is Silent Invasion by Ellen Crystall. The town is called Pine Bush and in the early nineties so many people flocked to this area to ufo-watch the local police imposed fines on anyone doing so because of trespassing complaints. Her hypothesis was they were mining Beryllium in the area. That location has been further researched by one Dr. Bruce Cornet in an attempt to gather more detailed evidence see http://www.monmouth.com/~bcornet/sow.htm.

To the east of this area persistent sightings in the hudson valley were documented in Night Seige by the late Dr. J. Allen Hynek (inventor of the Close Encounter classification). The regularity of these sightings also indicates a persistent presence.

Many other areas across north America and the globe have similar claims. For instance 3 hours drive north of Toronto Canada there were persistent sightings and landings on the frozen lake in the 70s at a lake called Boshkung where residents got so fed up they rode out on snowmobiles shooting at them and could hear the bullets pinging off. The landings were so frequent that according to one book it resembled a spaceport. Was it a temporary travelling caravan? Sightings there, though not as frequent, continue to this day. CE-5 mentions the snowmobile episode (Dr Haines) and more detail is given in the book Gateway to Oblivion by Cochrane.

Some say why don't they land on the White House lawn and announce themselves perhaps we should not hasten the day. It might be like TheDayTheEarthStoodStill? or worse: their announcement might be AllYourBaseAreBelongToUs

Dolphins: intelligent, alien life on this planet.

And elephants - Hmm - not convinced that elephants, while intelligent, are all that alien. Certainly their intelligence is less alien than dolphins'.

All this supposed evidence never seems to pan out - no tangible artifacts ever end up being alien. We are left with eyewitness testimony about lights and shapes seen in the sky, and events that happen after a loss of consciousness. OccamsRazor leads to the conclusion that there is no alien life on this planet, unless we are it.

It is interesting that WilliamOfOccam himself supported the notion of PluralityOfWorlds, ( and therefore the possibility we could be visited) only becoming opposed to it later on because he thought it was not mentioned in the Bible see http://www.angelfire.com/on2/daviddarling/Ockham.htm

{If a conclusion needs to be produced here and now, I would agree with a negative conclusion. However, a lessor question is: Is the UFO phenomenon a legitimate mystery, regardless of conclusions or origins? That is not something that OccamsRazor applies to.}

Some think LispWeenies are alien life :-)

The link in the following statement is broken.

See first: http://limpinwood.org/index.php?page=HowToMakeUfos . If OccamsRazor doesn't tell you that's all the aliens you're seeing, I have a WarpDrive to sell you. Very reasonable terms.

However, statements like this are always written by those who have never seen UFOs themselves. I happened to have seen a number of them, and nothing terrestrial can perform the aerobatics that real UFOs can do. Therefore, UFOs are real. What is not yet known, however, is whether they are extraterrestrial. That is the important question. It is known that plasmas can replicate many of the night-time appearances of most UFOs, and certainly can replicate their aerobatics due to their incredibly low mass. But, there is a fly in this ointment -- plasmas cannot replcate the duration of the sightings. The plasmas dissipate as soon as their energy source disappears. Unless you have a nearby thunderhead to replenish a ball lightning's charge in real-time nearby, it is not explainable by ball lightning either. So the question of what these objects are remains open.

--SamuelFalvo?

To conduct sound UFO, paranormal or, indeed, any investigation involving anecdotal observations, there needs to be a strong recognition of the distinction between perception and external reality, and an appreciation for human psychology. The claimed perception of a UFO does not necessarily mean there exists a real object to cause it. The ways in which visual perception can be fooled are manifold. For example, what appears to be an illuminated craft hovering in mid-air at night may actually be a boat on the water. Or, what appears to be ghostly orbs flitting through the air may actually be out-of-focus dust motes illuminated by video camera lighting.

A few years ago, my ex-wife and I videotaped both phenomena, intending to put them on YouTube to entertain friends. We decided not to, because the results were too effective; we were afraid observers would insist they were "real" despite our objections! In particular, the UFO tape was so realistic that though we knew we'd filmed a distant boat on water, it looked so much like an alien object hovering in the night air that it was difficult to overcome the subjective feeling that we'd filmed an extraterrestrial encounter. The illusion is potently effective because when the horizon isn't visible (as in low lighting over water), the brain expects the horizon to be much lower than it actually is. Hence, an object floating relatively nearby on the water appears to be a distant object floating in the air above the (expected) horizon. Filming a boat on water without knowing it's a boat on water (as can easily happen when the light is poor) would result, no doubt, in even stronger subjective impressions of a false reality. This is merely one of a myriad of ways in which the visual sense can be trivially fooled.