I Want To Believe
Anybody who watched the X-Files back in the day will remember this poster on Mulder's office wall. When I was a teenager I wanted to believe too. Then you get older, and increasingly cynical about anything and everything.
Given the tens of millions of camera phones in people's hands, where are the photos or videos of UFOs? Either everybody is pointing the cameras at themselves (very possibly true), or there are no UFOs – which I think is a huge shame.
Brian Cox (noted TV science guy over here) explained the reason we've never found any compelling evidence for extraterrestrials pretty well in a documentary I found myself watching a while ago. Yes, there are potentially billions of planets that might harbour life in the galaxy, and yes, there are potentially millions in the neighbourhood too – but given the time-spans planets evolve through, we have been here for the blink of an eye. The chances of two intelligent, similar species forming anywhere near each other in the same time frameare absolutely infinitesimally minute. We may well be alone at the moment.
It doesn't stop us wondering”what if” though.
There is no smoke without fire. The fact that so many stories are still told by retired servicemen can't all be explained away as misinformation, or attention seeking.