Space Aliens

No, the terms "UFO" and "ET" do not have the same meaning.

Specifically, "UFO" stands for an unidentified flying object. That object is not necessarily an alien spacecraft. Instead, it refers to whatever we do not recognize or understand with the technology and the interpretative or analytical skills available to us.

In contrast, "ET" stands for an extraterrrestrial life form. That means a life form whose home is not Planet Earth.

Of course, it is possible that there may be some overlap. It may be that a UFO turns out to be a self-propelled ET!

Now, let's get serious. There are no aliens known to exist, just a bunch of

anecdotes, and no matter how high you stack anecdotes, they never become

evidence. We hope there is other life out there, and we consider it likely. But

someone has to be the first form of intelligent life in the universe, and there is

no evidence that it isn't us.

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The answer above caused at least one reader such heartburn that he was

inspired to open a WikiAnswers account, just so he could go into the

section here and fling his burning wrath upon the writer of the answer above.

It's really quite a piece of work, and you ought to go have a look.

But here's something else to consider on the whole topic of aliens:

Everything we can see in the universe is within about 14 billion light years of us.

That's all we can see, so that's the maximum age of the universe that we definitely

know about ... 14 billion years. OK so far ? OK.

Let's say that various forms of life are always igniting, developing, evolving (if you will),

and fading out, all over the universe.

Let's say that it's not too common, but every now and then, life in one place gets

far enough along to develop higher intelligence, language, writing, technology,

and the whole thing. Let's say that when that happens, the intelligent, highly-

advanced life lasts 1 million years before it fades out.

Let's say that none of that happened for the first 1 billion years after the Big Bang ...

or whatever kicked off the universe. Let's say it took that much time for things to

settle down, get stabilized, get organized, make enough particles to make enough

stars to make enough supernovae to make enough heavy elements to make enough

rocks, blood, eyeballs, fast cars, MTV, ball-point pens, Facebook, etc. ... everything

you need for a civilization with intelligence and Rush Limbaugh.

So let's say it's only been going on for 13 billion years now, and that once a

highly-intelligent civilization develops, it lasts 1 million years.

That means that just in the part of the universe that we can see, there could

have been 13,000 different intelligent civilizations so far, on 13,000 different

planets, and no two of them would have had to exist at the same time!

The human race hasn't even had spoken language for anywhere near 1 million

years yet, and already we're about to foul our nest, make our planet unlivable,

and kill each other off militarily. But even if intelligent life is as common as dirt

and every civilization that arises lasts 1 million years, we could easily be the

only one that happens to be percolating at this particular moment in time.