Do you think aliens in ufos have visited Earth? (And all things UFO)

In April 2020, the Defense Department released videos recorded by infrared cameras on U.S. Navy aircraft that documented the planes’ encounters with a variety of “unidentified aerial phenomena.” Pilots reported seeing objects flying across the sky at hypersonic speeds and changing direction almost instantaneously, capabilities far beyond that of any known aircraft.

What were the pilots seeing? Bizarre atmospheric phenomena? Alien spacecraft? Something else? Several branches of the government have been investigating the events, motivated in part by concern that adversaries such as Russia or China might have made some spectacular technological advance, and later this month, the government plans to publish a report revealing what they know. Reportedly, the government will say there’s no proof of extraterrestrial activity, but that the incidents remain unexplained.

Chances are, though, that we should all be grateful that we don’t yet have any evidence of contact with alien civilizations. Attempting to communicate with extraterrestrials, if they do exist, could be extremely dangerous for us. We need to figure out whether it’s wise — or safe — and how to handle such attempts in an organized manner.

Some scientific circles have already been debating questions around whether to try to contact other civilizations. It’s a topic of profound importance for the entire planet. For 60 years, scientists have been searching with radio telescopes, listening in for possible signals coming from other civilizations on planets orbiting distant stars.

These efforts have largely been organized by the SETI institute in California — the acronym stands for Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence — and so far, they’ve had no success. Getting impatient, some other scientists are now pushing for a more active program — METI, for Messaging ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence — that wouldn’t just listen, but actually send out powerful messages toward other stars, seeking to make contact.

The search for aliens has reached a stage of technological sophistication and associated risk that it needs strict regulation at national and international levels. Without oversight, even one person — with access to powerful transmitting technology — could take actions affecting the future of the entire planet.

That’s because any aliens we ultimately encounter will likely be far more technologically advanced than we are, for a simple reason: Most stars in our galaxy are much older than the sun. If civilizations arise fairly frequently on some planets, then there ought to be many civilizations in our galaxy millions of years more advanced than our own. Many of these would likely have taken significant steps to begin exploring and possibly colonizing the galaxy.............

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outl...02f6a8-c899-11eb-81b1-34796c7393af_story.html