Are UFOs real? How scientists think about aliens
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“Incredible as it may seem, the United States government are in possession not only of non-human technology, craft and other technology, they’re also in possession of alien bodies.”
Australian author and journalist Ross Coulthart is a big thing among UFO aficionados in the United States.Credit: John Shakespeare
That’s Ross Coulthart, Gold Walkley-winning journalist, speaking to Channel Seven viewers in July.
Coulthart says he started off as a UFO sceptic, but his investigations have convinced him they are real – and that the US government is covering them up.
He’s far from alone. In the past year, UFOs have gone mainstream. The New York Times revealed a secret government program to investigate sightings in 2017.
That eventually led to a congressional investigation, which in July this year heard from a former intelligence officer, who was working on that government taskforce, who testified he’d discovered a secret government program to retrieve and reverse engineer alien aircraft.
Examine has been receiving messages from readers, asking us to weigh in. Are aliens real? And have they been visiting our little rock for decades?
Science can’t directly answer those questions, but it can offer some guidance on how to think about them.
Are aliens real?
Let’s start with the Fermi Paradox, also known as “Where are all the aliens?” which refers to the discrepancy between the high likelihood of advanced extraterrestrial life and the lack of conclusive evidence of its existence. Scientists roughly estimate the number of stars in the universe at 200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. Many of those have planets around them.
It’s hard to estimate the likelihood a given planet will have life. But if the chances are above zero, you’d think there would be life somewhere in the universe.
If you hold a grain of sand at arm’s length up to the sky, that’s about the size of the area shown here. The glittering blobs are not stars, but entire galaxies, each containing billions of stars.Credit: NASA
So, why hasn’t it made contact? Perhaps there’s a “great filter” that stops civilisations colonising the universe; travelling faster than light may simply be impossible, making exploration relatively slow.
Or perhaps we can’t hear alien signals, or they simply aren’t interested in talking to us.
Generally, astronomers think the universe does hold life, says Dr Brad Tucker, an astrophysicist at the Australian National University.
But they are split on whether that life must be intelligent. Because we evolved from simple lifeforms, we tend to think complex life is inevitable, but the evidence is equivocal, says Tucker. “Life? Yes. But take it up the chain, that’s where the debate diverges.”
Bottom line: aliens may be real.
Are UFOs real?
Given we can’t rule out the existence of aliens altogether, we should start our examination of UFOs with an open mind – they could be aliens! Or … they could be something else.
A scientist starts with an open mind, and then asks: what does the evidence say?
David Grusch told a congressional hearing that the US government has alien aircraft in its possession. Credit: Reuters
“You’re not saying outright, ‘It’s not true’,” says Tim Mendham, executive officer of the Australian Skeptics. But you’re looking for “something tangible – physical evidence, rather than theory”.
“If you say you can fly, I say, ‘Show me’.”
And the more extraordinary the claim, the more extraordinary the evidence we should demand.
David Grusch, the US “whistleblower” who created a sensation when he told a US congressional hearing that a clandestine government program has retrieved UFOs and possible alien remains, has no photos, no documents, no ship and no bodies. The evidence is classified, he says, or third-hand.
“He has shown no evidence at all, none whatsoever” to back his claims, says Mendham. “He makes passing references to having evidence, ‘But I can’t give it to you now’. Right, thank you very much, next.”
And we should not accept Grusch’s claims simply because he is a ranking officer on a UFO taskforce. Sceptics ask for the evidence rather than simply believing the word of a higher authority.
What about the videos of things that are hard to explain, such as flying objects displaying extreme acceleration?
Well, we can ask: What makes an alien the best explanation?
“If you’re going to say it’s aliens, you better have the data to say it’s aliens,” says Tucker.
We seek hard evidence, not the eyewitness accounts that fuel most UFO claims, because we humans are very easy to fool. As terrestrial creatures, we spend most of our time looking at things on our eye level. When we look up at the sky, we discover it is full of weird looking stuff!
Venus can sometimes glow like an enormous star. Meteorites and space junk can burn up in the atmosphere. Satellites can catch the sun’s rays in unusual ways. “I’ve been seeing satellite flares for the better part of 30 years. A lot of people who have not might call it a UFO,” says Monash University astronomer Associate Professor Michael Brown. “So we’re pretty cautious with eyewitness reports.”
Grusch claims we may not have detected alien visitors to Earth because they can travel in other dimensions.
This is known as the “dragon in the garage” fallacy. To verify a theory – that aliens can travel through other dimensions – you have to be able to test it. We can’t test or verify Grusch’s multidimensional claims, so as sceptics we shouldn’t entertain them.
Brown “remains very sceptical” about UFOs.
The digital cameras of today are leagues better than the film cameras of the 1940s. But, Brown points out, the UFO photos remain as blurry as ever.
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This article has been archived for your research. The original version from Sydney Morning Herald can be found here.
