Martian

I've seen this argument, but it's fallacious; the analogy doesn't hold up.

The thing about all of these prior advances is that none of them disobeyed the rules as we understood them. There's no real cognitive leap to adding another set of oars to a bireme. There's no great breakthrough required to raise a sail. It just took someone to think of these things. I'd even go so far to argue the the turbofan engines used in modern jets are an eventual logical extension of internal combustion engines. The science behind these things was in place long before they came into use; it just took someone to actually get there. Even breaking the sound barrier, which is commonly cited as being analogous to surpassing the speed of light, wasn't as revolutionary as it seemed. We already knew it was possible well before we actually achieved it, since relatively modern firearms had been managing it for at least a century prior.

Modern space vehicles are pushing the field of rocketry to it's limits. We can accelerate a vehicle to higher speeds by building bigger rockets with more thrust, but it's a case of diminishing returns. The vehicles get exponentially larger to the point where they soon become unfeasible. Our hypothetical aliens would need some new form of propulsion. The most common alternative I see offered is some form of device to manipulate gravity. If we assume for the sake of argument that these beings are using some understanding of physics that is far beyond our grasp in order to do so, we still run into a problem. Exponents play a role in gravity too; we know the force of gravity is inversely proportional to distance. What this means to our alien amigos is that the farther they get from a significant source of gravity, the less efficient their system will become. If they're making the trek from the Centauri system as I hypothesised above, they'd lose a lot of steam by the time they got two light years out. Space isn't as empty as most folks think and they would eventually slow down due to impacts with interstellar dust and other particles. So they're going to need something else and, frankly, we have no idea what they might use.

In other words, our aliens need an energy source far more efficient than anything we can dream up, a propulsion system beyond anything we can imagine, some way of dealing with relativistic effects during the trip and some way to survive the very long amount of time it would take (remember, even a trip from our closest neighbour at 1% the speed of light would take over 40 years). They'll also need some form of construction beyond our grasp, in order to build a vehicle capable of withstanding the stresses involved in such a journey. them's some pretty advanced little green men.

I don't buy the whole advanced technology explanation; I reckon that it's an argument you can only stretch so far before it becomes an almost theistic balm. We attribute these aliens with God-like powers, only instead of describing them as divine in nature we describe them as technological. The problem is, the aliens have to obey the same rules we do and the rules as we understand them now say that it's impossible for them to go faster than light and highly unlikely that they can even get close to light speed. This is one of the many problems I have with the UFO conspiracists.

But okay, I really ought to provide answers to what this stuff is. Surely there's something behind it?

Well, no. See, the human mind is an incredibly complex and marvelous thing. Often, we see what we want to see; where I see swamp gas or st. Elmo's fire, you see ufos. Where I see sleep paralysis or hallucinations, you see visits from little grey men. Only, if they're really aliens, they shouldn't be men at all; anyone with a basic grasp of the theory of evolution should be able to deduce that creatures evolving on another planet under different evolutionary pressures aren't terribly likely to end up with a morphology even close to our own.

None of those videos is particularly convincing. The kindest concession I can give is that these footage and pictures are things that could be UFO's, although there's really no way to be sure just by watching these. I'm inclined to say that the limitations of Youtube may have degraded the quality of the footage to the point where I'm unable to see whatever it is I'm supposed to be seeing.

A healthy dose of skepticism is a good thing. The UFO movement seems to think it's narrow minded to refuse to believe in something without concrete evidence; I would contest, on the other hand, that it's a bit naive to believe in something so seemingly unlikely without first demanding proof. Nobody to date has been able to provide any.

__________________
I wake up in the morning more tired than before I slept
I get through cryin' and I'm sadder than before I wept
I get through thinkin' now, and the thoughts have left my head
I get through speakin' and I can't remember, not a word that I said

- Ben Harper, Show Me A Little Shame