Could UFO's Exist: More Exciting News From Italy....

Recently it was reported from Italy that scientists had discovered that sub atomic particles called neutrinos can apparently move faster than the speed of light. UFO enthusiasts will no doubt be delighted. That surely proves that a more advanced civilisation in possession of this sort of technology must have been visiting earth, travelling in time and doing all sorts of other cosmically most upsetting things with Albert Einstein’s formerly well-ordered universe.  Well, it’s likely to mean no such thing. It’s probably what a science teacher of mine once referred to as “experimental error”, something with which my less than illustrious career in school science labs had an enduring acquaintance.

But what about UFOs - could they exist? Undoubtedly millions of people believe they do, in fact quite a few people are convinced they have been abducted by these visitors from outer space and been the subject of “experiments” (the sexual / reproductive nature of which probably speaks more to the states of mind of the “abductees” than the actual existence or otherwise of little green men). Given how many people are sure that they have suffered this indignity, it’s surprising there isn’t better evidence for these alien intruders.  At one point so many people thought they were being abducted there should have been a risk of UFO gridlock over the skies. If you suggest as much though, it’s all very easily explained - there is no proof because, of course, there is a government cover-up. Right.

Well, that’s quite a stretch isn’t it?  For starters, Governments are far too inefficient and clumsy to run long term successful cover ups.  But that’s not really the point. I don’t believe that aliens are visiting us. But, assuming I’m wrong, even if they were, I don’t believe we would know it. Here’s why.

The nearest star to our earth is Proxima Centauri and it is a red dwarf star about 4.2 light-years away. Given that it’s a red dwarf that makes it very unlikely any planets support life in its proximity. But let’s ignore that and pretend. If visitors from that system wanted to visit earth, then, flying straight across space as a crow would, so to speak, it would take 4.2 years to get here. That doesn’t sound too bad, however, that assumes they could fly at the speed of light.

Light speed is about 186 000 miles a second (or 700 million miles an hour), which means they are 25 754 400 000 000 miles away (25.75 trillion miles). To put that is some kind of perspective, if you were to fly to Proxima Centauri in a modern Dreamliner jet (max speed about 600 mph), the journey would take you just under 490 000 years. But let’s pretend they have a space ship travelling at 1 million miles an hour. Even at that speed its taking our little green men nearly 3000 years to get here and 6000 years to do a round trip. Not really worth setting out.

The problem is that, unless you can really travel at speeds approaching that of light, space travel is just about impossible. The distances are simply too great. 

To move space ships at such speeds is beyond the comprehension of our science, in fact according to Einstein, its impossible. But, science has been wrong before, and we have been pretending, so why stop now. Let’s assume they can travel at near light speed. If so, our visitors would have developed a level of technology so immeasurably more sophisticated than ours that it’s highly doubtful we would even know we were being watched or studied. They would justifiably consider us extremely primitive. It’s unlikely they would communicate with us, just as scientists don’t bother trying to communicate with things in a petri dish. 

Now consider the stories of slumbering mortals being abducted by these aliens so they can keep on conducting the same, crude experiments not unlike deranged Nazi doctors. No, not really very likely is it. Especially when you consider that such base scientific crudity is now less advanced than our own modern science, which can use a strand of hair to decode a human’s genome. Why would aliens repeatedly come from across space to try and do so?

Of course the above is even more highly unlikely because there are almost certainly no life- supporting star systems near to our own solar system. Our visitors would most likely have to come from much further afield, sustaining fragile lives across possibly hundreds of light years of empty, freezing space. The distances are beyond our simple comprehension and only the stuff of science fiction will see life travel across these near infinite blank inky voids.

The reality is, that there are almost certainly no visitors from outer space, certainly not that we would know about.

That’s not to say there isn’t life out there somewhere, but life forms are likely to be so far from each other in these infinite gulfs of distance, that contact between “civilizations” is going to be all but impossible. And perhaps that’s not such a bad thing, given how we treat each other here on earth. If I believed in any universal, all creating god, perhaps I might think that he, or she, had done that deliberately.

Let’s face it, neutrinos or not, we are utterly alone on our planet and in our “space”, and very likely to stay that way for a very, very long time ……………..