UFOs and aliens

I have seen many convincing (and not so convincing) images of strange flying craft on TV but I think they are based on science in our world and not visitors from another planet. But many are recorded by US Navy pilots for example and they must be true – they are recorded on radar. But I am still not convinced. Any organic “thing” inside a capsule changing course so incredibly rapidly would be turned to jelly. Or maybe that is why a spacecraft crashed in the desert. The argument goes that, if they are smart enough to travel millions of light-years to come to our planet, they are not going to be so dim as to crash in the desert.

It is strange. On this website, I have written about so many things in which I believe, but I don’t believe in UFOs and aliens. My naïvety stops there. Maybe what the pilots are seeing are supernatural effects, but not craft visiting us from another planet.

I read an article recently in The Times of London. It seems to substantiate my theory. (It refers to the AARO, set up by the US Government. It failed to find any evidence of UFOs, suggesting that the sightings were down to natural causes.)

Are we alone?

I think we are alone. There is something weird about the Universe, we search for habitable planets, some many light-years away, but in some ways it is a kind of illusion. Maybe everything we see is a kind of illusion. Our brains simply are not big enough to comprehend what is happening. We know a great deal, that is true. Thanks to the James Webb telescope, we can look back further in time than ever before. But, somehow, I think we are missing something! There is a famous theoretic question, The Fermi Paradox. If there are so many other civilisations out there, why have we never seen them? One theory put forward by Brian Cox (see below) is that, at a certain point in the development of technology, they reach a point where they can destroy themselves, so they never progress further. A warning for this world which certainly has the capacity to destroy itself. A few days ago, I read about a theory of the Universe, the Page-Wootters mechanism. Look it up, it is too complex to write about here. But basically, it says that the Universe is not changing, it is our concept of the Universe, and time itself, which we preceive.

Yesterday, I was watching minuscule black crabs on the seafront in Arrecife, where I live (black because their environment is volcanic). The complexity of their movements, like a dance, left me spellbound. Their brains are minute. And yet the fact that they can coordinate such moves left me thinking that there has to be more than this. There has to be some Designer who has put this all in place. I understand what Darwin said – these crabs demonstrate evolution by being black. But to say that this has all happened by chance? I can’t believe that, may millions of light years away, something similar is happening (or maybe they are building a time machine to come and tell me I am wrong!)

I rather like the idea that we are all connected via a medium which we can’t see or understand. That the movements of the crabs are not simply a mechanical process between a brain and legs and claws. They are part of the miracle around us that we all too easily forget.

Black holes

Recently, I've been watching a series of videos on YouTube by the scientist/musician/presenter, Brian Cox. I think that black holes definitely qualify to be included in this website. Sure, we know they exist, but there are many mysteries about what is called the "event horizon": the point surrounding the black hole from which nothing can escape.