Whoah, what? wow...

Where did that come from...?

Life just needs the right set of circumstances to get started; there are thought to be 200-400 billion planets in our galaxy (average 1 per star), and there are hundreds of billions of galaxies out there. What is unique about the Earth? Even if the probability is low, life must be commonplace in such a vast universe.

If (when) we discover another planet with life we will go there and investigate; if aliens discovered our world and were curious, they would probably do the same. I don't think the technology to visit another star system is that far beyond us, and we only achieved powered flight for the first time just over 100 years ago.

Aside from the UFO pranks and profiteers, it's interesting to consider the implications of life elsewhere, but maybe that's for another thread.

Indeed, it is not life out there question, it is questioning the lack of solid evidence saying the lights in the sky are aliens. I think camera's provide a lot of evidence with every shutter release. Billy Meier is a prime example of fakery.

To put it another way the eye can be fooled in a moment and so can a camera to some extent, but to get a convincing shot it has to be good and if it is good it will show up the fakers. Granted there are a few oddies but the money shot is not there.

I think if there was a genuine close up it would. And that is why I think shots that exist fail. Especially digital, there are many clues in the exif data, focus in the image, distance to out of focus, using the exif you can work out sizes of stuff in the image to some extent working on the focal length. So to fake it will take lot. They tried to fake an image for the Belgian wave, its authenticity was questioned for certain aspects and now admitted a fake. A recent attempt in Jerusalem was shown as shonky. Then onto to CGI. Even then there are clues.

As impressive as our progress in travel has been in the last 100 years, interstellar flight is a vast and probably insurmountable challenge. The distances involved and the time it would take are simply too large. Sadly we are pretty much limited to our own solar system in terms of physically going anywhere. The same is likely to be true for aliens, hence why UFOs are extremely unlikely to be from other Worlds

We are at a stage now when we need a fundamental technology breakthrough, and it's difficult to see beyond that, but I think technology and science will overcome the distances involved. People who were setting out to explore the New World in wooden boats a few hundred years ago would look at what we can do now and consider it magic; we would probably think the same thing if we could see what is possible in a few thousand years (assuming we don't destroy ourselves).

On Earth multi-cellular life took 3 billion years to evolve; humans have only been around for a few million years, and we only started using rudimentary tools in the last few thousand years and electronic technology in the last 100 years, a mere blink of the eye on a cosmological clock (amazing when you think about it); why would you consider the science and technology we have now as being the pinnacle of everything that's possible?

It's more than just 'we can go fast". Where would we go? Who would go? Would it be a generation ship? If so, that would be a vast undertaking. Would it's aim be exploration, or colonization? If we got where we were going, how long would it take to colonize? Where would supplies come from? Lots, and lots of issues even if we got ship speed to a decent enough rate of knots.

Exactly. The distances involved in travelling to even the nearest stars are measured in light years and there's no getting away from this fact. Flying to the Moon, Mars or anywhere else in our solar system is simply irrelevant to the task involved in flying to another star. I think we are already stalling in our physical manned exploration of space even on our own doorstep. The Cosmos is simply too vast for us to physically get out there. To back this up, there is certainly no evidence of any other alien civilisations colonising our galaxy, despite the fact that any one of them could have been around for far longer than us humans. I think there is almost certainly life out there, but it's unlikely that life ever comes into contact with other life on planets outside of its own solar system. The vast distances see to that.

I think the aims would be the same as always; all of those things. I agree though it's a huge undertaking requiring a completely different approach but I think that will happen eventually. What is needed is a catalyst, the most likely one being a NEO or the discovery of an Earth-twin by Kepler.

There are plenty of possibilities, there could be habitable planets orbiting nearby stars less than 10 ly away and we just can't detect them yet because of the glare from their stars. It wouldn't take too much of a technology leap to get to them, within the bounds of relativity. Anyhow we don't fully understand the laws of physics yet, our current theories can't account for 75% of the mass in the universe without fudging the maths with dark energy; so I think all bets are still on, really. Ever the optimist.