UFOs, Aliens, and The Truth

 

Mike Bodnar takes a rational look at aliens and UFO sightings, and asks, are they real, or is the truth still out there?

(Note: This blog will be available as a podcast on my radio programme 'Mike On...', on Spotify Podcasts from Thursday 16 January 2025)

No, not real; AI-generated

In this blog I’m going to look at the possibility of alien life existing, both in the wider context of the universe and, closer to home, here on Earth.

It’s a controversial subject that, despite all the science we have at our disposal, still comes down to belief: whether you believe alien life exists elsewhere in the universe or not, because, as of right now we have no proof that it does.

And, equally controversially, we’ll discuss whether aliens have visited, or are indeed visiting, us here on Earth.

So, don your tin-foil hat, strap in and come along for the ride…

 

UFOs AND UAPs: WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?

UFO:

The acronym UFO stands for "unidentified flying object" and originated in 1952 when Captain Edward J. Ruppelt of the United States Air Force used it to be more general than the term "flying saucer", which was popularly employed to describe mysterious objects in the sky after a 1947 sighting.

In June of that year, pilot Kenneth Arnold reported seeing "shiny, unidentifiable objects flying in the sky" near Mt. Rainier in Washington. His claim garnered a lot of media coverage and led to a craze about flying discs and saucers. The public lapped it up. At last! Aliens!

UAP:

The term "unidentified aerial phenomena" was first used in 1987, when it featured in an article about an "International Symposium on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena". However, the move from using UFO to UAP in mainstream media and debate really began in 2020, when the Pentagon established a Navy-led "UAP Task Force" to investigate reports of unexplained aerial phenomena.

Today, UAP is used to describe events in the air, sea, space, and, since 2022 - bizarrely - land, that cannot be immediately identified as aircraft or natural phenomena. The acronym UAP is now preferred over UFO because it's intended to avoid the assumptions and stigma associated with UFOs, such as alien visitors, and of course the attendant conspiracy theories. But that doesn't stop millions of people reporting having seen a 'UFO.'

THE PROBLEM WITH THE TERMINOLOGY

Greetings Earthlings! (Pinterest)

For decades, people have conflated the term UFO – and more recently UAPs – with alien lifeforms visiting earth.

When someone witnesses an unidentified flying object, that’s just what it is: something that appears to be flying or hovering in the air that isn’t immediately apparent as anything we know, and therefore can't immediately be explained. The same applies to UAPs.

But people, especially those with a leaning towards believing in aliens, like to leap to the conclusion that what they’ve seen is ‘evidence’ of aliens. It’s not, because despite all analysis and interpretation, it remains unidentified, and therefore is nothing more than mysterious.

People erroneously ask, 'Do you believe in UFOs?' There can only be one answer to that: Yes! Because there are, unquestionably, objects which have been seen in the air which are unidentified. No question. Whether they're alien spacecraft, well, that's a different question. 

THE ONGOING ISSUE

But here’s the ongoing issue: despite all the decades of UFO and UAP reports, despite all the investigations, despite the thousands of videos and photos of these phenomena, despite so-called eye-witness reports from people claiming to have been abducted by aliens, despite all of these, we do not have a shred of evidence that we have been, or are being visited, by aliens.

Well, that settles it (Oak Bay News)

For example, the number of videos and photos of UFOs/UAPs has dramatically increased in
the last 20 or more years because now everyone carries a camera with them, in the form of a mobile phone. And yet we still don’t have any top quality definitive footage or photos; instead we see blurry, out-of-focus things in the sky, with camera shake and much zooming in and out, often with no context (e.g. buildings, trees, skylines), and no solid definition.

Sure, some images and footage are better than others, and some look quite convincing, but absolutely nothing to date is proof that what we’re looking at is an alien craft. Ever since 1947, people have been throwing hubcaps into the sky and photographing them, claiming they've captured a flying saucer. If something becomes fashionable, a hoax is sure to follow.

But wouldn’t you think, with everyone carrying a camera, that by now someone, someone, would have captured some really decent images or footage? Well, no.

And the arrival of Artificial Intelligence in creating images and video now just compounds the issue, because we have to be extra vigilant to determine what’s real and what’s AI-generated. The days of throwing hubcaps are over. The days of fake news is still here.

THE PENTAGON

(Image: Wikipedia)

There was great excitement just a few years ago when the Pentagon released an official report on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.

However, the nine-page preliminary report basically said what I’ve just said: that despite all the so-called evidence, no conclusions about alien visitations can be reached. Of more concern, it says, is that there are unexplained phenomena in the skies which could pose a threat to the US simply by their unknowable nature.

Deputy Secretary of Defence, Kathleen Hicks, issued a memo following the report's release, saying that it highlights the problem of flight hazards near military training ranges. Also the report highlighted dangers to military pilots, so in that respect it’s more of a health and safety document than a definitive conclusive  treatise on alien spacecraft.

So again, despite official investigation, we still have nothing conclusive to say aliens are behind the phenomena of UAPs.

Which, of course, gives rise to conspiracy theories, where people claim that aliens have been on Earth for decades but that governments are covering up their existence.

THE BIG COVER-UP

So let’s look at that. Why would governments hide such a momentous discovery? Why, if alien technology was available to us, have we not adopted it or adapted to our advantage? Where, for example, are our own flying saucers, and why do NASA and other space agencies spend billions of dollars in their efforts to get things to orbit or to the moon if we actually have the technology to fly there almost instantaneously?

Big firework. (Image: Daily Pioneer)

Because, let’s face it, if aliens have come here then it’s likely from far beyond our own solar system, which means they presumably have conquered faster-than-light travel. Which also means they must be incredibly advanced. And yet, we’re still lighting the touch-paper on rockets and standing back to watch them burn clumsily into space.

There could be an argument that announcing the existence of aliens would have a huge and negative impact on religion - that people’s belief systems and faith could be shattered, knowing that God must have created other beings elsewhere. That maybe Adam and Eve weren’t the only ones to kickstart life on Earth. It would certainly be a blow to the church, and a massive test of faith for billions of people. So yes, maybe that’s one reason for keeping aliens quiet.

But let’s say, just for a moment, that aliens have come here, or are here. We have to ask why, and what is their purpose?

THE PRIME DIRECTIVE

If you’re a Star Trek fan you’ll know that the Prime Directive of Star Fleet is basically that if you encounter an alien civilization, you don’t interfere with it or even announce your presence, unless that civilization has also reached a technological level whereby it is capable of and fully understands space travel and the existence of other civilizations in the universe. It could be argued we’re not there yet because, as I mentioned earlier, we’re still launching solid fuel rockets, which technologically is not much beyond letting off fireworks.

Alien nudist (Image: Dreamstime)

The Prime Directive is science fiction, but an advanced alien race would, presumably, have deep wisdom central to its missions. Wisely, an alien race who discovered Earth was inhabited, would keep at a distance while gathering and analysing all it could, and it could do this of course by monitoring all our radio and TV broadcasts (poor things!) and browsing the Internet.

The prospect of aliens having to sit through episodes of Neighbours or American Idol doesn’t bear thinking about though.

But they wouldn’t have to fly mysteriously through our skies, or create fuzzy flashing lights in the night sky, or appear at 3 a.m. at the end of your bed waving a threatening probing finger at you.

Nor would they necessarily appear as big-eyed little green or silver men, usually without spacesuits or even clothing, which seems to be the norm from alien encounter reports!

I mean, seriously, do you really think an advanced alien race is going to explore the galaxy stark naked? I don’t think so.

And, if they are here, would they even be humanoid in form? 

BODY OF EVIDENCE

So here’s the thing: ever since science fiction became a literary genre, followed by sci-fi films and television, many - if  not most - of the aliens have been humanoid. A head, torso, two arms, two legs. In cinematic terms we can understand this because it enables the studio wardrobe department to simply make a costume into which an actor steps or is zipped up in. Look at early, even current, Dr. Who episodes, featuring the cybermen, the Ood, the Autons, the Slitheen, the Sontarans, and so on. Star Trek is just as guilty, and so are many others (Lost in Space, the original TV series, I'm looking at you...).

But most of the so-called real-life alien encounters have also been with humanoids: little green

(A Dr. Who alien. Image: BBC)

men, skeletal tall figures, and so on.

The thing is, there’s nothing to say that aliens will, if they exist (and we’ll come to the chances of that in a moment), should look anything like us. In fact, they could be in a form we don’t even recognise, and could – as some conspiracy theorists believe - be among us right now.

How (you’re asking)? Seriously?  Surely we’d know if the Lizard People walked among us? Well, I’m not talking about people. One of my favourite alien types are the Eldil. They featured in C. S. Lewis’s sci-fi novel Out of the Silent Planet, and, according to Wikipedia, 'they are made of exotic matter and appear as faint light that humans can barely see.' In fact, you have to look away from them to see them, where they appear in your peripheral vision.

But again, that’s science fiction. Let’s look at a real race of beings that can be everywhere all the time, yet invisible. It’s true. They exist... and we are they.

LIFE JIM, BUT NOT AS WE KNOW IT

Submitted for your approval (cue Twilight Zone theme tune), one human race and one sub-set of that, a race of pygmies in an isolated jungle. These pygmies have never had contact with civilization, have never met another human being, and yet evidence of our existence is all around them every minute of every day. Our existence passes through their jungle village constantly, yet they cannot see or hear us, because, they do not have the technology to pick up radio waves or TV signals, or Wi-Fi. If they did they could abandon their dugout canoes and sit in their huts watching Grand Designs or the Great British Bake-Off.

But they don’t have the technology. They don’t even know the technology exists!

So what’s to say that we humans, we so-called civilized humans, also don’t have the technology to identify evidence of an alien race, simply because we can’t pick up their signals? That we just don’t know how to?

We're listening... (Image: Wikipedia)

It’s not for lack of trying; for decades we’ve been attempting to find signals from outer space, something regular, something meaningful that indicates a sentient source, or even sends us a message. Despite all the radio telescopes and the efforts, we haven’t. Sure, there have been strange noises, the odd 'Wow! moment, but most it turns out are made by stars, or colliding galaxies, or other astronomical events far distant. Or nearby microwave ovens.

So maybe we’re not listening with the right equipment. Maybe we haven’t even thought of it yet. So we could be those pygmies, here on Earth, living in a relative galactic stone age.

I recently read Andy Weir’s sci-fi novel Project Hail Mary, in which he proposes an alien race of microbes, and another of a sort of arachnids-slash-slaters who are basically blind, yet have developed space travel. Weir is more famous for having written The Martian, which was made into a movie starring Matt Damon as an astronaut stranded on Mars, but I liked the aliens in Hail Mary for being different.

Yet here we are, overflowing with reports of UFOs or UAPs and aliens in humanoid form, usually intergalactic nudists. We need to stretch our imaginations a bit more.

SO WHERE IS EVERYBODY?

Finally, let’s come to the crux of the matter (that’s an astronomical pun only southern hemisphere stargazers will get): If aliens exist, where are they?

This question is called The Fermi Paradox: The Fermi Paradox is 'the discrepancy between the lack of conclusive evidence of advanced extraterrestrial life and the apparently high likelihood of its existence.'

Where is everybody? (Image: Pinterest)

That’s from Wikipedia, which goes on to say: 'Those affirming the paradox generally conclude
that if the conditions required for life to arise from non-living matter are as permissive as the available evidence on Earth indicates, then extraterrestrial life would be sufficiently common such that it would be implausible for it not to have been detected yet.'

In short, if what we’ve witnessed about the emergence and development of life on Earth is typical, then given the estimated large number of so-called habitable planets in the universe, where the hell is everybody? The Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi asked this in 1950, and it hasn’t been answered yet.

But almost every week another star with planets orbiting it is discovered by astronomers as our technology gets better and better, so the evidence is mounting that many, many such planets exist. In fact they're quite common. But there is however absolutely no evidence that any advanced alien races exist.

Wikipeida sums up the contradiction thus:

'The following are some of the facts and hypotheses that together serve to highlight the apparent contradiction:

•      There are billions of stars in the Milky Way similar to the Sun.
•      With high probability, some of these stars have Earth-like planets in a circumstellar habitable zone.
•      Many of these stars, and hence their planets, are much older than the Sun. If Earth-like planets are typical, some may have developed intelligent life long ago.
•      Some of these civilizations may have developed interstellar travel, a step that humans are investigating now.
•      Even at the slow pace of currently envisioned interstellar travel, the Milky Way galaxy could be completely traversed in a few million years.
•      Since many of the Sun-like stars are billions of years older than the Sun, the Earth should have already been visited by extraterrestrial civilizations, or at least their probes.

·     However, there is no convincing evidence that this has happened.'

I WANT TO BELIEVE…

So where does that leave us? It leaves us right where we started: despite all the research, the reports and the analysis, there’s not a shred of evidence that an advanced alien race exists anywhere, or has visited us, or is here now.

But, as I said, maybe we just don’t know how to look for them yet. I believe we should keep trying.

When I was around ages 12, 13 and 14, I desperately wanted aliens to exist, partly because I was a science fiction fan already, but also because I’d had my own UFO sighting.

(Mulder and Scully, The X-Files (Image: New Republic)

It was in the night sky above Liverpool, my home city, and I was out with my mum walking the dog. Suddenly, in the sky to the west I saw a V-formation of lights. I can’t remember now how many, but you need at least three for a v-formation, and I think there might have been five. They were moving together at a steady pace and eventually went out of sight.

Indeed, there were reports in the paper from others who had seen them, and an official excuse from the air force followed, saying that it was nothing more than an aircraft refuelling exercise.

Seriously? A refuelling exercise over a major city? I don’t think so. But, I never discovered anything more.

Another, spookier encounter I had, was about 16 or maybe even 20 years ago here in New Zealand. I was out in the garden on a starry night, looking at the sky, when suddenly a dark shape, and I mean a pitch black shape, passed across the stars at a steady and measured pace. So black it was like a void, or something that consumed light.

There were no navigation lights, no sound, just a shadow obscuring the stars as it passed across the sky. I have no idea how high it was.

Yes, it obviously could have been a bird, though there appeared to be no flapping.

All I can say is, I’d like a copy of the poster that used to hang in Mulder’s basement office in the X-Files, the one with a flying saucer and the words, I Want To Believe.

And I do want to believe, it’s just that I also want the evidence, and I haven’t seen it yet, which for me, after over 60 years of keeping my fingers crossed, watching the skies, and reading and looking at reports of unexplained phenomena, is disappointing.

I do believe the truth is out there. It’s just not here.

 

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