Have aliens really visited us? : Congress UFO Hearing July 2023

    A couple of weeks ago, I watched the entire video of the UFO hearing held by Congress on July 26, 2023. The hearing affected me more than I expected it to. I got obsessed with UFOs after that. And then I started looking up videos about UFOs on YouTube. I started going through subreddits that were dedicated to UFOs. I went through multiple threads discussing the UFO hearing on Reddit, going through hundreds of comments. 

What happened in the UFO hearing?

    If you don't know what exactly happened in that hearing then let me try to summarize it for you. Basically, three former military officials testified to Congress that the US government is keeping information about UFOs under wraps, even from the US Congress. And that the US government is also in possession of UFOs. And the most stunning part of the testimony was the claim that the US government is in possession of 'non-human biologics' found in the crashed UFOs. There wasn't any evidence presented during the public hearing but it was stated that they would provide evidence to Congress members in a confidential setting. 

    I have to tell you that I'm not someone who believes that UFOs by default mean aliens. Even before I watched the hearing, I used to believe that UFOs could be real, but not in a conspiracy theorist manner.  UFO literally stands for unidentified flying objects. So UFOs could be anything that flies but couldn't be identified. Recently the term UAP (Unidentified Aerial/Anomalous Phenomena) has been used interchangeably with UFO which basically means the same thing with wider coverage including unidentified objects also found in water, land, and space. So it could be anything from a plastic bag blown by the wind that is mistaken for something anomalous, to actual hyper-advanced alien technology. I also think a lot of UFO sightings might not even be an object. It could be a glitch in the recording device, an optical illusion, someone's imagination, or a hallucination. I also think that a lot of UFO sighting videos we see online could be doctored videos, an optical illusion, or something that is misidentified. I usually don't pay attention to UFO sighting reports because they don't have any proof of authenticity. But it doesn't mean it's all hoaxes and lies. The problem is that it's very hard to distinguish a genuine claim from a hoax and, an authentic video from a doctored one. 

    But when Pentagon declassified several UFO sighting videos in 2020 during the pandemic, that changed how I viewed UFOs. It was the first time I was seeing UFO videos whose authenticity was verified by someone as big as the Pentagon. It actually didn't do much for me though because I already had the belief that UFOs might be real and these are most probably next-gen advanced technology that hadn't been made public. Moreover, they are monochromatic grainy videos, so it's very hard to discern anything from them. Similarly, I had the belief that Area 51 is not a facility where they keep alien corpses and alien spaceships. I had a theory that Area 51 is just a highly secure secret weapons and technology research facility. And obviously, they would keep it as obscure and secret as possible for the sake of confidentiality and national security. And, I also used to believe that lots of UFOs people see are most probably next-generation military technology being tested either by the US itself or other countries like China and Russia. 

    I didn't consider the possibility that UFOs could be aliens even if that was the most popular theory. I didn't completely deny the possibility either, but following Occam's razor principle, I thought it was less probable for it to be aliens and more likely for it to be secret military technology.

Are we alone in the universe?

    You might be wondering if I believe in the existence of aliens. I absolutely believe aliens could exist. Mind you, that aliens don't just mean those green weird-looking creatures in flying saucers. They could just be some single-celled organisms. Any life forms that originated outside of the Earth are aliens or extraterrestrial by definition. I firmly believe that there is a very good chance that advanced space-faring alien civilizations could also possibly exist, based on statistical probability. 

    Let me escort you through this cosmic wonder. There are on average 100 billion stars just in a single galaxy and there are approximately 200 billion galaxies in our known universe. So that is around 20 sextillions (billion trillion) stars in the known universe. That is an inconceivably large number. 20 sextillion is 2 followed by 22 zeros. There's possibly no comprehensible way to convey the scale of that number. Anyways, there are multiple planets in almost every star system. So even if we consider only 0.0001% of those planets are Earth-like habitable planets then there's the possibility that 20 quadrillions of planets have life on them. And even if we consider that only 0.000000001% of those planets that can sustain life, developed an intelligent life form then there are still possibly 200 thousand planets with intelligent life forms throughout the known universe. Given that humans took around 300,000 years to reach where we are now from being primitive primates and that the universe is 13.8 billion years old, there has been a lot of time for those 200 thousand planets to develop into advanced civilizations just like us or even better.

    So why haven't we found aliens yet if the probability of advanced alien civilization existing is so high? It's mostly because the universe is inconceivably enormous. The 2nd closest star (the closest star is the Sun, Duh!) Proxima Centauri is 4.246 light years away, which means if there are advanced alien civilizations on one of the planets of Proxima Centauri then they would only get our signal 4.25 years after we send it. And if they immediately respond back then we'd get a response 8.5 years after we originally sent the signal. The farthest known galaxy is around 92 billion light years away, so a signal will take around 92 billion years just to reach there. Let me remind you that the universe itself is only 13.8 billion years old and the Earth is only 4.5 billion years old. So you see how astronomically and inconceivably enormous the universe is. Therefore, we might never be able to find alien civilizations even if they are out there. It could also be possible that life is extremely difficult to emerge. It might need trillions of things to happen in exactly the right order and magnitude for life to happen. So even with so many potentially habitable planets, life might never have happened anywhere else but Earth.

    There's another possibility that they might have been destroyed long ago. They could have been wiped out by some cosmic events, war with other advanced civilizations, or by their own fault. It could be possible that it's the nature of intelligent civilizations that they would eventually create a technology that would be so powerful and destructive that they become responsible for their own extinction. It is also possible that we haven't been looking the correct way because they are so many variables and unknowns. Or simply the aliens don't want to be found so, they conceal themselves. This dichotomy, between the high probability of extraterrestrial intelligence existing and the fact that we haven't yet found any evidence of the existence of extraterrestrial life, is referred to as Fermi's paradox. 

    Anyways, I got carried away with the grandiosity of the universe. I think you now have an idea why I believe that UFOs are less likely to be aliens even if I absolutely believe in the possibility of the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence. Being said that, after the hearing, I have grown more open to the idea that UFOs could possibly be extraterrestrial intelligence. Especially the claim that the US government had been in possession of UAPs and even 'non-human' biologics were acquired from crashed UAPs, has substantially affected my thought process and perspective regarding UFOs. 

     I'm not saying that I believe everything said in that testimony. Even though they are considered very credible officials and they testified under oath, there still isn't any hard evidence to verify anything they have claimed. But it did make me consider the possibilities.

Are UFOs extraterrestrial intelligence?

     After watching the hearing, I spent a lot of time on the internet looking up news, archives, and discussions about UFOs. I came across mostly two types of mindsets regarding UFOs. There are believers who are taking the hearing itself as solid proof of aliens visiting us. And there are skeptics who are trying very hard to discredit everything and everyone involved in UFO-related matters. I think both of these approaches are problematic.

     Firstly, testimony under oath isn't the same as hard evidence. They could still be lying, or they might be delusional or something else is going on. But it also doesn't mean their testimony is just another fart in the wind. The term "non-human" biologics used in the hearing is somewhat interesting. I wonder why wasn't the term "extraterrestrial" used if they actually meant to claim that extraterritorial biologics were acquired from the UAP crash site. Non-human could also mean any creature found on Earth that isn't human. What if, what they found is actually a secret experimental next-generation military tech with a chimpanzee inside it as a test subject? (If you chuckled or rolled your eyes, then we would get along)

    Whether the UFO hearing implies alien contact or not, it is now clear that there have been many officially verified UFO sightings. So either way, it is something very interesting to think about. Moreover, the nature of UAPs described in the testimony makes it even more intriguing. It has been stated that the UAPs had no visible propulsion system and they moved in a way that our current technology isn't capable of achieving. Moreover, it was also stated that they seemed to defy the laws of physics, as we know it. 

    This is what drew my attention more, because whenever I hear about UFOs I used to dismiss it as some secret next-gen technology. But, it now makes me somewhat skeptical about UFOs being something man-made. If they are something man-made, then it is even more fascinating, because apparently, someone has already pioneered a technology so advanced that even the most experienced fighter pilots describe it as physics-defying technology. So whether the UFOs are something man-made or not, they are either way very thought-provoking and worth wondering about.  

Is believing that UFOs are aliens, a cultist mindset?

     Associating UFOs with aliens is the most obvious and prominent theory. But I think it's actually very lazy. We see something we don't understand, so we automatically attribute them to aliens? Doesn't that sound familiar? Yes, I'm talking about religion. I believe the main reason for the creation of religion is humanity's tendency to hate the information vacuum. A few thousand years ago, we didn't have much scientific understanding of our world. There were so many things around us we couldn't explain. Water pours down from the sky -- Don't know why. Solar eclipse envelops daylight into darkness -- Complete mystery. So because of that information vacuum people started to attribute these natural phenomena to some imaginary entity of higher form. We would rather make false assumptions about the world than be clueless and uncertain. It gives us some sense of security. Even if it's a false one. Lightening that lights up the whole sky and thunder that roars across the heaven is easier to think of as a brawl among gods than to keep wondering what it might be, every time there is thunder and lightning. 

Other theories on UFOs

    We still have no convincing evidence that UFOs are aliens. So why limit our imagination to just aliens? UFOs could be some anomalous natural phenomena that we are not even aware of is possible. Just a few hundred years ago we didn't even know solar flares were even a thing. Just a couple hundred years ago we had no idea about radiation while it is everywhere and always affecting us in some ways. So I think it wouldn't be illogical to theorize that UFOs are some otherworldly and rare natural phenomena.

    There are other more outlandish possibilities than aliens. What if we are actually living in some kind of simulated reality and the UFOs are some type of glitch in the simulation. I know it sounds like a ridiculous stretch. But why not entertain these ideas until we really know for certain, what UFOs are. There's a property in string theory called the holographic principle, which suggests that the universe could be a hologram. 

    Want to hear another even more outlandish theory? What if there are some hidden ancient civilizations living on Earth that evolved even before humans existed. And these UFOs are their tech. I took inspiration for this theory from the original Planet of the Apes(1968) movie. 

    UFOs could also be time-travel pods developed by future humans. So basically future humans could be testing these pods by sending them back in time. I'm actually surprised that this theory isn't popular given that time travel is like the most popular sci-fi trope of modern times. Although we don't yet have a scientific theory that suggests traveling back in time is attainable, we do already have the special theory of relativity that suggests that time-traveling to the future is attainable. So we never know, we may also figure out traveling back in time in the distant future. 

    I have got one more outlandish theory. UFOs are interdimensional travel vessels. In other words, a vessel used for traversing through parallel universes. What if humans or some other creature in a parallel universe are much more advanced than us and they have pioneered interdimensional travel? Parallel universes or multiverses are even popular as scientific hypotheses, not just as a science fiction trope. You might have heard about the Many Worlds theory in quantum physics, which basically suggests the possibility of multiverses.

    I personally think the most plausible possibility for UFOs is secret next-gen technology. Because to me, it is more probable and simple to think that some scientists had been working on technologies that we are not aware of than aliens visiting Earth. And this has happened several times in the past regarding military technologies. Humans have already split atoms (fission) and even subatomic particles (using LHC), which sounds stranger than science fiction. A hundred years ago, quantum mechanics was even ridiculed as non-sense by many renowned scientists like Einstein. And today we have functional quantum computers. Today we have computers in our pockets that are millions of times more powerful than the computers that put humans on the moon. UFOs may seem to defy physics as we know it, but that doesn't mean scientists haven't been working on expanding our current understanding of physics. Just over a hundred years ago, the idea that time works differently in different places was only considered a fantasy. And today every GPS satellite has to constantly correct their time to account for the time dilation in space. So, I don't think it's so much of a stretch to say UFOs could be some secret man-made technology.

What if UFOs are actually aliens?

    But I do agree that the alien theory is much more plausible than my outlandish sci-fi theories. If UFOs are aliens then it would mean that their home planet most probably isn't close by, because SETI and METI have been looking for and trying to contact extraterrestrial intelligence for decades. It's also possible that we have missed spotting the aliens within our neighborhood because we may not be doing it right and there are so many unknowns. But let's consider they are from distant galaxies. Then that means they have already pioneered interstellar travel. And given all the UFO sightings that had been reported, they must have been visiting Earth for at least a hundred years. So why are they here? Maybe just reconnaissance missions. Maybe they are in the initial phase of their interstellar technology and conducting experiments. So far, they don't seem to care about communicating with humanity, neither do they seem hostile. It could also be that they view us as lower life forms, just like we view insects or other animals, so they just don't care about us. 

    The possibilities are endless, intriguing, and somewhat scary as well. It could trigger an existential crisis in many people, due to the grandiose nature of the implications of this possible discovery. If the alien angle gets proven in the next few months or years, then it would be the biggest scientific discovery for humanity. I'm actually very excited about that possibility. But so far we don't have any concrete proof. So in the meantime, the best course of action is to keep an open mind and live our life as usual.