Most Americans think intelligent aliens exist, and half think they have visited Earth

[Admin]

A new survey reveals that most Americans believe in intelligent extraterrestrial life and do not feel threatened by the appearance of UFOs.

Most Americans think intelligent aliens exist, and half think they have visited Earth : Read more

 

[rod]

"Approximately 65% of Americans concur that extraterrestrials exist, and about 51% say that UFO sightings reported by members of the U.S. military represent visits from intelligent aliens, according to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C."

That is an interesting survey. The space.com article does report the UFOs are not shown to be from other star systems, let alone have the ability to fly from Earth to the Moon or Mars and back in our solar system. I use these two exoplanet sites for research. The Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia (exoplanet.eu) and NASA Exoplanet Archive (caltech.edu)

Both show the confirmed exoplanets and properties. If we run MS SQL query, both sites show more than 1300 exoplanets in the size range <=2 earth radii and packed in much closer to their parent stars too. Most will be larger than this range and running a query >= 1.1 Jupiter masses is revealing too Change the survey and ask which of these exoplanets <=2 earth radii size did the intelligent aliens operating the UFOs come from It would also be interesting to see what the public believes about how the intelligent space aliens had their origins, e.g. abiogenesis?

 

[sam85geo]

I recall a medieval argument about how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. While pins exist, the same could not be demonstrated conclusively for angels; yet most medieval folks believed in the existence of angels, The concept of angels today has morphed into the marketing of women's undergarments using svelte, (and not so svelte), ladies adorned with wings as angels. Note: I'm not complaining, not a bit. However, with a similar medieval type belief and interest in UFO's, I would dislike in the extreme, if the current pleasing marketing concept morphed into svelte and, of course, not so svelte, squat, little, green ladies posing as a UFO's crew adorned in toddler clothing. Fortunately, what some folks believe without objective evidence usually turns out to be false.

 

[Anonymousrt]

Other life does exist, but to what extent?
Earth has one intelligent species… we are human. Now count the other species that will never reach this goal of intelligence needed to be considered us.
The possibility is dim, that a intelligent species of whatever you can think of exist as we humans exist. It’s taken humans millions of years just to become a human being.
Now count all of those billions of possible life supporting planets that we will never see.
The possibilities are endless, but we can still dream one day of a discovery.

 

[sam85geo]

Intelligence is a matter of definition. Note: horses, dogs, cats and even wild animals can and do communicate with humans. Refer to the many heartwarming stories regularly in the media. We, H. Sapiens, are arrogant, snide and snotty about our communicative and learning ability which is simply an evolutionary function of having noisy ancestors who lived in trees, used stuff for tools, and were able to survive in the existing changing conditions out of those trees. I recommend the book "The Ends of The World" by Peter Brannen, which outlines our tenuously lucky rise to planetary dominance. Next consider the cosmic speed limit of the speed of light, and the expansion of space at approx. 22km/sec per Mly. IMO any similarly fortunate space alien species like us, mostly likely didn't evolve, and if they did they can't get here from where ever they are.