guests from space

In matters of rumors about UFOs, the same tools used in scientific research should be used. Despite all the theories and reports about extraterrestrial life, so far the conditions have not been met to prove that aliens have indeed visited here

Every few months Israel is hit by a new plague of UFOs. The unidentified objects are attributed to visitors from outer space, and panic about them led this time to a proposal to appoint an investigative committee on behalf of the Minister of Science. The subject of UFOs has not dropped from the world's public agenda since the early XNUMXs: thousands of articles, books and films have been written about it, commissions of inquiry have been appointed, associations have been founded - and the mystery remains as it was. Unidentified flying objects excite our imagination. Those who fly them are, according to those addicted to the matter, intelligent beings from another planet. The descriptions of the aliens are surprising in their monotony - small humanoids who are engaged in scaring humans at night, and in extreme cases - kidnapping them and experimenting on them. But so far no real evidence has been provided - documentation of an arranged meeting, material items that can be tested or proven information about communication. It is claimed that the critics prefer to remain discreet, but it seems that if even one percent of the thousands of reported encounters were true, we would already have conclusive proof.

Only a few scientists would argue that extraterrestrial life is completely impossible. Therefore, in contrast to clearly unnatural phenomena, such as seeing the occult, telekinesis or predicting the future, the reports about UFOs are not in conflict with scientific knowledge. Most scientists see the formation of life on Earth as a natural phenomenon, which can be explained chemically and physically, even if the details of the process are still unknown. Therefore, they accept as a matter of course the possibility of the existence of life on other planets, especially in light of the identification of planets around other suns in the last two years, and the exciting report this week on the discovery of a possible life form in a meteorite from Mars. There is even an organized scientific discipline that deals with the probability of the formation of intelligent life in other worlds, taking into account the number of suns in the universe, the possibility of the existence of planets around them and the likelihood of the existence of suitable environmental conditions in them.

The main counter-argument that is voiced is that the chance of foreign visits is small and that any novice judge would have dismissed outright the evidence that has been presented so far of its existence. There is especially little chance that the aliens will decide to visit the Jordan Valley area in our tiny country many times in a certain month, and at the same time avoid any appearance in other parts of the world. The best explanation for the "bundles" of such reports is in the field of crowd psychology, from which one can also learn a lot about the UFO phenomenon as a whole. The personification of aliens is an example of a fashionable influence: according to most evolution researchers, the chance of a real alien resembling us is zero.

But are all UFOs a figment of imagination? Commissions of inquiry appointed in the past, for example by the US security forces, have shown that more than 90% of all sightings can be explained as atmospheric phenomena, conventional aircraft, balloons or secret weapons. The examiners took the proper scientific precaution and stated that a small percentage of the reports cannot be simply explained. But if we take into account that many of the observers distort their reports due to panic or forgetfulness, we will come to the conclusion that there is a very high probability that none of the reports refer to actual extraterrestrial objects. This conclusion is greatly strengthened if you remember that a real UFO would have been detected in an instant by the thousands of radar screens and intelligence facilities spread across all continents. We must use the same tools here that we faithfully use in scientific research: a phenomenon is considered proven, if it was observed independently by several people at the time, if decisive evidence was brought to it, and if it can be published in a scientific journal in a way that other scientists can examine it. So far, these conditions have not been met, so there is no escape from treating UFOs as an anecdotal phenomenon. The possible existence of aliens raises deep philosophical questions. Is man an unusual phenomenon in the universe, or is our galaxy inhabited by hundreds of civilizations, many of which may be far more developed than us? If extraterrestrial intelligences do exist, would they have any interest in meeting us? If they arrive, how will we contact you? Is it to be expected that there will be peacemakers or warmongers? Will they look like us, or radically different? These questions, and many others, actually concern ourselves: we are essentially asking about the essence of man, his necessity, the limits of his ability and the meaning of his existence on earth. Science allows us to collect evidence for much fainter and rarer phenomena than a visit by an aircraft with intelligent beings in it. The sophisticated measuring tools of modern science detect tiny changes in the background radiation of the universe, which teach us about the Big Bang, send us information about the composition of the atmospheres of distant planets, show us the shape of tiny protein beads that explain the secret of life, and even enable the search for signals of intelligence from the space. In the same way it is also possible to collect conclusive, indisputable proofs of the visits of aliens. There is no reason in the world that on a specific subject
This, which is a natural phenomenon for everything, we will use different judgment tools, and will be based solely on the reports of frightened citizens and highly imaginative boys. It is important to report (without exaggeration) on strange celestial phenomena, but ultimately the study of UFOs should be left to scientists. We can be confident that if one day real aliens do appear here, the evidence of their visit will be conclusive, and we can safely celebrate the first contact with a culture from another world.