If a non-astronomer tells somebody about ‘strange things’ the first he gets is lots of jokes.

That’s why a serious astronomer must not tell nobody about strange things … if he wants to keep beeing astronomer.

May be Google is fine tuned by aliens!!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varginha_UFO_incident

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendlesham_Forest_Incident

There is no need to believe that an UFO will ever land on the White House Lawn. Also, do not expect that they will ever find any evidence for extraterrestrial life (aside from bacterias and microorganisms). That is because there are no extraterrestrials visiting the earth! Whatever “they” are: They are NOT from another planet in our galaxy! Instead, allmost all of the evidence that we have points to the so-called “interdimensional hypothesis”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interdimensional_hypothesis

And Stephen Hawking, brilliant as he is in other areas, doesn’t seem to have done ANY research into exopolitical matters and ufology in general. Maybe if he had known about Varginha or Rendlesham and had seen this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vyVe-6YdUk

…he wouldn’t have said the stupid things he said.
For example: Are Buzz Aldrin, Gordon Cooper and the incredible amount of high ranking government officials that have spoken out openly about UFO’s recently �cranks & weirdos� (as Hawking put it)? Remember: Gordon Cooper filmed a UFO during the time when he studied at the USAF Experimental Flight Test School at Edwards AFB. It landed right before his eyes on a dry lake bed. Too bad he gave the film to some guy from the government. The film simply disappeared… .
Furthermore, the “acclimatization campaign” is under way (and now more obvious than ever), as you can read here:

http://newsblaze.com/story/20080516152544reye.nb/newsblaze/OPINIONS/Opinions.html

As the late J. Allen Hynek said: “There is an embarrassing body of evidence” that we are being visited.
In a few years we will see a significant increase in suicides among hardcore ufo-skeptics as groups within the NATO are pushing disclosure right now and the UN seems to be even more upfront about this.

Start here, if you want to know what everyone who researches such things knows.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IZD_RfFFHY

I cannot wait until the rest of society wakes the hell up………..

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.
- Albert Einstein

It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.
Albert Einstein

Also, I was watching a video of unexplained lights on some UFO show, and my wife walked past and said, ‘that’s looking down on a sailboat with a bunch of lights on it’. She was right! As soon as she said this, it was obvious. I still see this video on UFO shows as dramatic proof of alien visitors.

I’m a (granted, very, very amateur astronomer) and I did report TWO incidents to you in an email. You seemed not to take my email seriously or perhaps you didn’t even read it.

Anyway, I can see a couple of logical flaws in your #1 reason. First, most astronomers are looking at very small areas and usually have their eyes fixed on what they are looking at, not scanning the sky for moving objects. Also, they are most likely to be looking at the sky only after dark so that’s half of the day gone.

And aren’t them also most likely to dismiss any unusual thing as “mundane objects like airplanes, satellites, reflections, meteors, and Venus.” I’m guessing only a small number actually double check if there was anything normal above them at the time, they’ll just assume it is something normal. This is similar to an explanation Randy gave as to why/how some scientists were fooled when they first started testing subjects for “paranormal” powers. Simply, they didn’t know what to look for.

Ah, but you assume that the alien-made UFOs *have* “radar-evading technologies”. Maybe they just came across a material which has those properties by chance, and not by design. Look at our own real-world example, the Stealth bomber/fighter, which was designed to have a very small radar footprint, but whose surface does not hold up well in the rain

And why do so many assume that aliens who can traverse space must of necessity have cloaking devices on their transportation? We, a fairly advanced civilization, have sent numerous probes that are reaching for the limits of space, and to the best of my (imperfect) knowledge, none of them (Voyager, Pioneer, et al.) have cloaking devices, do they?

And for those who believe that aliens are real, and that they are here already….well, it is *possible*, but it’s not *probable*. Then again, of the maybe trillions of microbes on earth, at least some of them are of extra-terrestrial origin. Who knows, maybe HIV is not the product of a government experiment to wipe out black people but is an ET intelligence that didn’t figure on being absorbed by the bodies of these pesky humans that they found here on earth.

OK, OK, I will take off my tinfoil hat and put down my copy of “The X-Files” box set, and let the rest of you ponder this. I am proud to be a human though — we are probably the only creatures in known existence who have the capability to envisage and articulate the possibility of un-earthly intelligences, going so far as to produce arguments and counter-arguments about their existence, how they evolved, how they could come here, why would they come here, etc.

and yet:
amateur astronomers make discoveries of new objects all the time. perhaps the only field where nowadays, the amateur’s productivity is close to that of the professional.

http://www.revisionism.nl/Moon/The-Mad-Revisionist.htm

expose the conspiracy! let the truth out!

except for the ones who crash, of course.

either they don’t want to be observed by humans, and are too incompetent to manage that, or they do want to contact humans, and are incompetent to do that. either way, it’s a hell of a waste of fuel for them.

On a serious note, the variety of comments here and on networkworld.com is amazing. It just shows the need to be precise and specific in thought and speech. Many good, in se valid arguments run past each other and miss the point.

Except that in several instances UFO buffs have reported that the UFO beings have specifically told the contactee where the UFO beings are from. In the early days of ufology this origin point for the UFO beings was commonly a planet in our solar system:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Adamski

“On November 20, 1952 Adamski and several friends were in the Colorado Desert near the town of Desert Center, California when they are said to have seen a large submarine-shaped object hovering in the sky. Believing that the ship was looking for him, Adamski is said to have left his friends and to have headed away from the main road. Shortly afterwards, according to Adamski’s accounts, a scout ship made of a type of translucent metal landed close to him, and its pilot, a Venusian called Orthon, disembarked and sought him out.

Adamski described Orthon as being of medium height humanoid, having long-blond hair, a tanned skin , and as wearing reddish-brown shoes with a trouser: “his trousers were not like mine”. Adamski said Orthon communicated with him via telepathy and through hand signals. During their conversation, Orthon is said to have warned of the dangers of nuclear war and to have arranged for Adamski to be taken on a trip to see the solar system including the planet Venus, the location where Mrs. Adamski had been reincarnated. Adamski said that Orthon had refused to allow himself to be photographed, and instead asked Adamski to provide him with a blank photographic plate, which Adamski says that he gave him. When Orthon left, Adamski said that he and George Hunt Williamson were able to take plaster casts of Orthons footprints, and that the prints contained mysterious symbols.”

As American and Soviet space probes travelled farther and farther and visited the planets in our solar system, the origin point for the UFO beings shifted from within our solar system to other star systems such as Zeta Reticuli. My, oh my, what a coincidence. Just as real space probes arrive at Venus and find that the environment is hostile to life, all of a sudden the UFO folks aren’t from there anymore.

Will happen on December 12, 2008, visible in your local theatre when Klaatu returns! And this prophecy will prove to be true!

(unless producers and directors yet start fighting over character, caliber and salability and this project is mercily aborted)

And that is exactly why we’re smart. Creatures with such advantages are perfectly capable of successfully reproducing without ever making the vast metabolic investment needed to develop and sustain a large brain, or the equally vast developmental investment needed to learn how to use it.

If alien intelligence are visiting our planet, it will have developed technologies well beyond human comprehension. Crossing time and space (and they will manipulate time), only to zip precariously through the sky and flash the headlights at a few ignorant humans? The whole plot would seem a bit naive.

Would we recognize or even perceive alien technology? Would they care to reveal themselves and to what purpose would it serve?

Even if there were something unique on earth of interest to them, perhaps a valuable resource or some astronomically unique fluke of nature, would they not have already dealt with it, in the time of their choice? Why would that time be now and why return repeatedly?

Astronomers possess no greater potential of seeing a UFO than an average person (in other words, don’t hold your breath).