posted on May, 26 2005 @ 05:06 PM
Well, meshugg, I can tell you a similar story. There is this engineer who has worked in aerospace for most of his career. He's sixty and ready for
retirement next year, and here is what he says:
I am almost sure to the point of inevitability that there exist intelligent extraterrestrial life forms. I have no specific
knowledge/proof/information, bnut on my existing scientific understanding and probability (sound familiar?).
Given the number of stars in a galaxy and the number of galaxies in the Universe, plus recent discoveries which drastically increase the number of
stars with discernable planets, we see a modification the results of Drake's Equation, pushing the chances of intelligent life up by a large
factor.
I also have no specific knowledge/proof/information that starflight is possible, or that aliens have reached Earth, now or in the distant past.
This is almost word for word what your respondent says, and it's also what I say (because I'm the engineer I spoke of above), and it's also what
just about every scientist and engineer you speak to will say.
You see, meshuggah, common sense and basic math tells us that much.
But what your correspondent (and I, and probably 99 percent of the scientists and engineers alive) doesn't say is just as important as what he
does say.
Because he doesn't say he believes in visitors to the Earth, now, or in the past. And my guess as to why he doesn't say he buys into visitors to
the Earth from outer space is the same reason that I have:
There is simply no evidence which points to recent (within the past 100,000 years) of any such visitors to the Earth.
[edit on 26-5-2005 by Off_The_Street]