UFO claims and stories of extraterrestrial visitors to Earth need to be considered without blanket scepticism, a physicist and former NASA researcher has shockingly claimed.
NASA’s hunt for proof of alien life is at the forefront of the space agency’s deep space exploration. But here on Earth, many conspiracy theorists and self-appointed UFO-hunters are already certain aliens visit Earth on a regular basis. Most of these alien claims, supposed UFO sightings and stories of mysterious crop circles appearing overnight are immediately dismissed by the scientific community. A former NASA researcher and physicist at the University of Albany, however, has argued immediate scepticism to all UFO-related theories is counterproductive.
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Kevin Knuth, an associate professor at Albany, argued in an opinion piece for Cosmos Magazine, the odds of life existing outside of Earth are pretty high.
The “unsettling and refreshing” possibility is exactly why, he argued, more attention needs to be paid to what is happening in the skies.
Dr Knuth said: “I think UFO scepticism has become something of a religion with an agenda, discounting the possibility of extraterrestrials without scientific evidence, while often providing silly hypotheses describing only one or two aspects of a UFO encounter reinforcing the popular belief that there is a conspiracy.
“A scientist must consider all of the possible hypotheses that explain all of the data, and since little is known, the extraterrestrial hypothesis cannot yet be ruled out.
“In the end, the sceptics often do science a disservice by providing a poor example of how science is to be conducted.
The main reason why scientists are exhorted about the prospect of alien life, outside of questionable UFO footage, is the so-called Fermi Paradox.
Nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi explored the probability of life developing outside of Earth after he considered some 300 billion stars exist in the galaxy, many of which are billions of years older than our own Sun.
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Even if intelligent life was to develop on a small fraction of these planets in the near 14 billion-year-long history of the universe, tens of thousands of alien species should technically exist outside of Earth.
Dr Knuth said this might in and of itself does not prove aliens do exist somewhere in the Milky Way but the prospect is nonetheless exciting.
The biggest problem faced by human explorers today is the lack of speedy and efficient interstellar travel technology.
The scientist said: “With the rocket-based technologies that we have developed for space travel, it would take between 5 and 50 million years for a civilisation like ours to colonise our Milky Way galaxy.
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“Since this should have happened several times already in the history of our galaxy, one should wonder where is the evidence of these civilisations?
Unfortunately, Dr Knuth said, there has been no “smoking gun” evidence, which could once and for all prove the existence of UFOs.
But the topic remains an area worthy of interest, study and serious debate for as long as even the slightest possibility of alien life exists.
Dr Knuth said it would greatly benefit the scientific community to try and better understand alien visitors should they ever arrive.
Does NASA expect to find alien life outside of Earth?
One of the US space agency’s principal goals in deep space exploration is to find evidence of extraterrestrial life.
Current life hunting missions are focused on the discovery of distant exoplanets with habitable conditions similar to those of Earth’s.
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