Originally Posted By: sleddriver
I bet I've spent close to a few thousand hours at least staring at the sky, both naked eye, through binoculars and through lots of telescopes, including my own. In deep dark sky conditions. I've seen many UFO's..but they weren't extraterrestial.
Plenty of fireballs, meteors, flashing geosyncs, satellites that failed to achieve orbit, old booster rocket bodies from USA, Soviet, Russia & China programs, dead sats, the ISS, jets, space shuttles and lots of spy satellites in polar orbits. I've even seen a globular cluster (Mayall II) in another galaxy (Andromeda).
After all, there is a lot of stuff up 'there'. However in reality most of what's OUT THERE is....space. A lot of it.
It's a sure bet other civilizations exist 'out there'. The odds are overwhelming. However, to get HERE takes some fancy flying + an infinite amount of power before your life runs out.
One last point, visible light comprises a teeny, tiny part in the overall electromagnetic spectrum. This is why we use radio, x-ray, gamma-ray, etc. telescopes.
Not only is there a lot of sky to search, there's also lots of frequencies.
Been skywatching all my life. Almost everything is explainable, with predictable and repeatable arcs and movements - until it isn't.
When one of those specks of lite, dots, objects you are tracking across the sky makes a 90 degree right hand turn at thousands of miles an hour, comes to an instant halt, or accelerates out of your field of vision from a dead stop in less time than an eye blink, thats not natural, and we can't do that.
When visible objects violate the laws of newtonian physics one has to ask deeper more uncomfortable questions.
UD
I bet I've spent close to a few thousand hours at least staring at the sky, both naked eye, through binoculars and through lots of telescopes, including my own. In deep dark sky conditions. I've seen many UFO's..but they weren't extraterrestial.
Plenty of fireballs, meteors, flashing geosyncs, satellites that failed to achieve orbit, old booster rocket bodies from USA, Soviet, Russia & China programs, dead sats, the ISS, jets, space shuttles and lots of spy satellites in polar orbits. I've even seen a globular cluster (Mayall II) in another galaxy (Andromeda).
After all, there is a lot of stuff up 'there'. However in reality most of what's OUT THERE is....space. A lot of it.
It's a sure bet other civilizations exist 'out there'. The odds are overwhelming. However, to get HERE takes some fancy flying + an infinite amount of power before your life runs out.
One last point, visible light comprises a teeny, tiny part in the overall electromagnetic spectrum. This is why we use radio, x-ray, gamma-ray, etc. telescopes.
Not only is there a lot of sky to search, there's also lots of frequencies.
Been skywatching all my life. Almost everything is explainable, with predictable and repeatable arcs and movements - until it isn't.
When one of those specks of lite, dots, objects you are tracking across the sky makes a 90 degree right hand turn at thousands of miles an hour, comes to an instant halt, or accelerates out of your field of vision from a dead stop in less time than an eye blink, thats not natural, and we can't do that.
When visible objects violate the laws of newtonian physics one has to ask deeper more uncomfortable questions.
UD
