Ever see a UFO?

I saw a flash in the sky once. thought it was nothing.

then found out it was an exploding missle from a nearby test range.

I saw a weird light doing strange things in the sky very close to the highway one night. So did my father. Made it even more suspect because I was driving tangent to the Hanford Nuclear Site in Washington state... Probly nothing worth mentioning though.

When I worked in local papers there were always people seeing UFOs etc. Happened regularly. Likewise with all kinds of other weird stuff. You know - 'Really big in the sky', 'I saw it really clearly' 'As close to me as you are now'. All that stuff.

UFOs have been spotted since the 1950s. But it all died down at about the same time mobile phones starting coming in.

Not sure if it's that the little handset things terrify them. May be the transmitter masts give off stuff that keeps them away.

I'm not sure.

Real shame though. Because now everyone would all be able to verify their sightings by taking pictures and even videos with their camera phones.

(Guy I worked with loved all the UFO stuff. He went on to edit a different paper and had a front page on how there were loads of UFO sightings one night. He got the experts to give all their theories. It all happened on the same night there was a hot air balloon festival 30 miles up the road.)

I run in the early morning hours and so routinely see shooting stars. Could one or more of them have been something else? Possibly? I doubt it but one never knows.

I know a guy who was abducted and probed while on a UFO....

I was driving from Los Angeles to Tucson one night through the desert and a craft with a light underneath kept flying back and forth in the desert parallel to the road.

It as not a plane, not a helicopter, was fast and silent, stopping suddenly and going the other direction.

It scared the bloody hell out of me. I was concerned they were going to pick me up or something. Then when I got past them I wondered if they had and blocked my memory of it.

It was flying back and forth for 10 minutes or so. Very fast.

Yeah I believe in them, that the government knows about them and that they are all over the places, probably a lot more infiltrated on earth than most people know.

I don't believe in UFO's, but I love the stories. I'll bet the show you were listening to was "Coast to Coast AM". Once when I was driving through Colorado I listened to 3 hours of Sasquatch sightings. Great stuff.

they are out there wrote:

Yeah I believe in them, that the government knows about them and that they are all over the places, probably a lot more infiltrated on earth than most people know.

So do those little green people ever talk to you? I bet you still believe in Santa Claus too.

I've never seen one.

I was outside one night and saw a streak of bright objects fly across the sky quickly. Turned out it was an old Russian satellite breaking up - seen across the East coast apparently (source was spaceweather.com)

ive never seen one no, but i do believe in them. its alot more probable then most people think. just think about it this way...

our sun is one of the youngest stars in the universe. seeing how far weve come with evolution and everything no one can rule out the possibility that one of the other, much older stars, or suns if youd like, had evolution take place many years ago. whose to say they couldnt have evolved life forms there that have over the year developed very far intellectually as well. now im not saying they fly here on their spaceships and pick people up so they can probe them then send them back down. although in a way we do that to animals that we "tag" to study there habits on migration so you cant rule that theory out ;). looking at it in that manner its very possible that there are aliens and they could very easily have the technology to be able to fly here. hope we find a real answer before my life comes to an end. id really like to know the truth. well that is implying that our government allows us to know the truth which that is another mystery even greater then aliens.

My mom and I were sitting in the car at a stop light and we saw this green ball with a red streak behind it way in the distance but not far above the horizon. It looked like it was crashing. I swore it was a UFO.

Turns out it was a meteorite that landed in some farmer's field. (or at least that's what the government wants you to think)

they are out there wrote:

I was driving from Los Angeles to Tucson one night through the desert and a craft with a light underneath kept flying back and forth in the desert parallel to the road.

Rogue helicopter pilot trying out a new vehicle, no doubt.

No, but I've seen Pamela Anderson's left nipple

I know that faster-than-light travel is a common theme in sci-fi, but I honestly don't think it's possible. And without faster-than-light travel, no alien will be visiting Earth anytime soon. Physicists have theorized about wormholes and other such things, but even in those theories, the gravities involved would destroy anything that traveled through one.

KnowItAll wrote:

I know that faster-than-light travel is a common theme in sci-fi, but I honestly don't think it's possible. And without faster-than-light travel, no alien will be visiting Earth anytime soon. Physicists have theorized about wormholes and other such things, but even in those theories, the gravities involved would destroy anything that traveled through one.

I agree that faster-than-light travel is a likely impossibility. However, there are plenty of stars and planets within 100 light years of Earth. Look at how far humans have come in the last few hundred years. If there is a civilization on another planet that has a significant head start over us, then I would expect that they have mastered traveling at slightly below the speed of light. Who knows what their life expectancy is either? If they can live to 1000 years, than spending 50 years traveling on a ship to explore our solar system isn't that big of a deal. I know it sounds far fetched, but its within the realm of possibility.

Nobody paid attention in physics did they...

See link for where I copied it from...

Time dilation would make it possible for passengers in a fast moving vehicle to travel into the further future while aging very little, in that their great speed retards the rate of passage of onboard time. That is, the ship's clock (and according to relativity, any human travelling with it) shows less elapsed time than stationary clocks. For sufficiently high speeds the effect is dramatic. For example, one year of travel might correspond to ten years at home. Indeed, a constant 1 g acceleration would permit humans to circumnavigate the known universe (with a radius of some 13.7 billion light years) in one human lifetime. The space-travellers could return to earth billions of years in the future (provided the Universe hadn't collapsed and our solar system was still around, of course). A scenario based on this idea was presented in the novel Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle.

A more likely use of this effect would be to enable humans to travel to nearby stars without spending their entire lives aboard the ship. However, any such application of time dilation would require the use of some new, advanced method of propulsion. A further problem with relativistic travel is that at such velocities dispersed particles in the rarefied interstellar medium would turn into a stream of high-energy cosmic rays that would destroy the ship unless extraordinary radiation protection measures were taken.

Current space flight technology has fundamental theoretical limits based on the practical problem that, per other aspects of Einsteinian relativity affecting mass, an increasing amount of energy is required for propulsion as a craft approaches the speed of light. The likelihood of collision with small space debris and other particulate material is another practical limitation. At the velocities presently attained, however, time dilation is not a factor in space travel.

they are out there wrote:

Then when I got past them I wondered if they had and blocked my memory of it.

If that was the case why wouldn't they have blocked your memory of seeing their ship?

Here's my fundamental problem with the idea that we are being visited by extra-terrestrials:

For any lifeform from outside our solar system to get here, they would need to be far, far more advanced technologically than we are in order to overcome all the difficulties with traveling near the speed of light.

If that is the case, they would certainly be capable of figuring out a way to observe us, probe us, etc., without ANY of us ever being aware that it is happening, if that's what they wanted to do.

If they didn't care if we noticed, they wouldn't bother grabbing only isolated individuals from lonely country roads late at night. They'd just scoop us up from Times Square on New Years Eve.

The only plausible possibilities for us being visited by extra-terrestrials are that they would go completely unnoticed by us, or they would be plainly obvious to us.

Andy Barber wrote:

UFOs have been spotted since the 1950s. But it all died down at about the same time mobile phones starting coming in.

Actually, there was a large number of UFO sightings in the 1890's, which was really bizarre for people because this was about decade before the Wright Brothers, so there was little confusion with planes.

The best descriptions I've read about the 1890 sightings was in a book written in the 1970's that I had found in my colleges library during a study break. I'm sure there's info online though.

UFOs have believed to have been sighted for all of human history though. Through different interpretations of ancient text, different interpretations of myths/legends, cave paintings, various art work, etc. there have been many possible mentionings of UFO's by earlier people.

It's important to also remember that UFO only means Unidentifed Flying Object. Doesn't necessarily have to involve Extra-Terrestials (ET's).