The mere suggestion by a top government official that “aliens” could explain some UFO activity is the latest example of the government’s striking shift in tone regarding this issue.

This week, the director of the U.S. government’s UFO analysis office stated that there is “evidence” of concerning unidentified flying object activity “in our backyard.” According to physicist Seán Kirkpatrick, who heads the congressionally-mandated All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, this alarming UFO activity can be attributed to one of two extraordinary sources: either a foreign power or “aliens.”

To be sure, the ramifications of either would be significant. But Kirkpatrick’s comments, which come as he is about to retire after a 27-year defense and intelligence-focused career, are more intriguing because he also says that “none” of the hundreds of military UFO reports analyzed by his office recently “have been positively attributed to foreign activities.”

At the same time, Kirkpatrick and senior defense officials have ruled out the possibility that secret U.S. programs or experimental aircraft explain the phenomena.

  • clockwork_octopus@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    1 year ago

    I like this idea, but it doesn’t hold up either. We know that time travel is technically possible, but only in one direction - you can only move forward in time, never backwards. So, if a craft left earth and set out into that vast ocean of space only to return after a good long time of visiting other worlds, those aboard that craft would return to an earth that has experienced much more time passing. To those on the ship, it would appear that the ship really wouldn’t have been gone for that long, while to those of us poor saps stuck in the gravity well, a metric crap ton of time would have passed on earth before we’d ever see that ship again.

    A simple guide to time travel

    Edit: After thinking about this some more, the exception to this would be if a craft left earth tens of thousands of years ago. If that were the case, they could be returning now to a world completely unknown to them, which would absolutely warrant an observation-only kind of reaction. However, we don’t have a whole lot of evidence for a lost-in-time advanced society. There’s a couple of interesting things that have popped up in history, sure, but nothing to suggest a civilization advanced enough to have achieved space travel, so again, though it’s not outside the realm of possibility, it’s extremely unlikely.