Odin1: "I base my belief on ET's by the numbers. It is really hard for me to believe as big as our galaxy is that we are the only intelligent life."
Some data:-
Number of stars in the Milky Way: maybe 400,000,000,000
Number of stars within 100 light-years: < 15,000
Number of stars within 16 light-years: 63
Looking at the numbers, it's not difficult (for me, at least) to imagine that there are other technological civilisations (TC) out there.
It's less easy to imagine that there's a TC on one of the 15,000 stars within 100 lt yrs. Statistically, for a single one of those to host a TC would require 27,000,000 TC stars in throughout the galaxy.
Coming closer to Earth the odds grow dimmer. For a TC to be around one of the 63 stars within 16 lt yrs, there should be more than 6,000,000,000 other TC stars in the galaxy. OK, maybe there are, but the odds don't look so good.
There are sure to be other factors to take into account, but I expect you get the drift. First there are the statistical probabilities, then there's the science. If we are sticking with science, nothing can travel through space faster than light. Even just a few years makes it a long trip for a flying visit!
So, it seems to me that what's really being implied is that some kind of hyperspace travel is being employed. I suppose that would rule UFOs out totally in the view of most scientists. However, supposing that some TCs have found loopholes in the science (or wormholes in the galaxy
), then they could presumably arrive in no time at all from anywhere at all, like genies out of bottles.
Whatever, I don't think it's impossible that an alien spacecraft has been spotted - just improbable.
As for the conspiracy theories, they seem, invariably, to contain strong elements of idiocy, so I try not to waste time on them. But your own question is reasonable:
Odin1: "Why do you think the governments of this earth would want to keep contact or proof of existence of EBE's from the public?"
I don't. I mean, I don't take it as a foregone conclusion - some might, but then some might not. What do you think?
