It is incredibly nieve and ethnocentric to believe that, with the 100s of billions of other planets out there, that we are simply alone. There are over 100 Billion galaxies observable and 300 some billion stars per galaxy. To say that there isn't any way feasible for another intelligent, and far more advanced society to ours is simply inane.
I can't say that I have any evidence of flying whatever...but the numbers are just far too vast to cast off the possibility of other creatures out there. I believe it is feasible for some to be able to travel and collect data...but I could just be a kook!
I have no problem with the idea that other intelligent species evolved in other solar systems. But those species have not evolved concurrently.
When you consider the age of each system in the universe, and the hundreds of millions of light years distance across the universe. You can eliminate the vast majority of the universe from the possibility of having life forms which could visit Earth.
Remember that we are not seeing the stars in the sky today. We are seeing the stars at the time the light left that star. The pictures we take with the Hubbard Telescope are actually, in most cases, millions and millions of years old. Even the pictures of stars on the edge of our own galaxy are 50,000 years old.
This solar system is estimated at five billion years old. Of those five billion years, man crawled out of the caves about 6000 to 8000 years ago. We actually have had a recognizable mechanized society for about 100 years.
100 years out of 5 billion, that is less than a blink on the geological time scale. And how long before Man either pushes himself to extinction, or at least back into the caves to start over? Maybe another 100 to 200 years? Perhaps 1000 years with some luck?
Our own galaxy is over 100,000 light years across with an estimated 100 to 400 billion stars in it.
So, really, what are the odds that another mechanized society exists
at this point in time, and that they can make a journey of 50,000 years, and that they will stumble across our humble little planet among all the billions of other planets out there? And the chance that we have detected absolutely no trace of these voyagers or their communications with all of the radio telescopes aimed at the heavens?
But then, I do not buy lottery tickets either.
It is not like you can just sail west until you run into another continent which spans the width of the globe.
