Sun, 28. December 2014
No, UFOs Are Not Real
I got a message from someone who was listening to "a very reputable individual in the field of physics and astronomy". The topic was crop circles and ufos........... <sigh>.
I wished my friend well for 2015 and told him that he shouldn't take the individual too seriously because he is apparently a Swiss "physics crank" according to Rational Wiki. His entry in Wikipedia was deleted after much deliberation because "the claims he makes are clearly bogus"; "damages Wikipedia's credibility"; and he possessed "no notability".
My cerealogistic friend then sent me the usual reply about remaining open-minded until proved or disproved.
I'm open minded - but I'm not gullible!
Crop circles certainly do/did exist - and they were initially created by two human hoaxers called Doug Bower and Dave Chorley in Wiltshire, England. Their simple methods have been proven and copied worldwide by other people since then. No aliens necessary.
A prominent man-made crop circle in Menangle, Campbelltown, NSW. This was created by irrigators.
Unidentified flying objects exist too - until they are identified. Sadly, some people misidentify them as alien spaceships - but paradoxically they still call them ufos!
They also cite that it would be too hard for two humans to create crop circles, therefore it must have been ufos which did it. However, if it was too hard for Doug and Dave to make the crop circles, then surely it would be just as difficult for any others who attempted to do it - including aliens, for whom it would have been a lot more complex.
Why would aliens want to do it anyway? It's a simple choice between two alternate possibilities. Either:
-
a bunch of mischievous aliens from some other planet elsewhere in the galaxy got together one day and said "let's all spend a few hundred years travelling an unbelievably huge distance to planet Earth in our flying saucers without anyone detecting us and we'll make some crop circles (near the roads) in the English wheat fields to confuse those pesky humans and make them think we are leaving some kind of crazy and obscure message"; or
- the crop circles were created by the two human pranksters who actually admitted doing it.
When it's a choice between the least likely (implausible) solution; and the most likely (credible) explanation, a lot of folks go straight for the implausible. I'll opt for the most credible solution. We know humans exist. We do not yet know if aliens even exist and we are fairly certain they are not visiting our planet.
I thought this utterly ridiculous alien crop circle UFO theory had died out years ago but - just like many other absurd conspiracy theories - they just keep coming back and people keep falling for it. Just like the supposed Moon Landing hoax and the 'Mars is going to be bigger than the Moon' hoax, which both keep coming around. People love irrational explanations and will often jump to the most unlikely cause in preference to a sensible explanation.
Some people exploit such gullibility to make money out of it.
The people who think aliens created the crop circles cannot explain why they make such a gigantic leap of logic to come up with the conclusion that if (in their opinion) two men couldn't do it, it must have been done by aliens (whose technology is far more advanced than ours)! Is there nothing else in-between?
Anyway, Doug and Dave didn't need to use "technology" - they used "a plank of wood, rope, and a baseball cap fitted with a loop of wire to help them walk in a straight line"!
As for ufos, there are far too many people who, when faced with an object in the sky which they cannot identify, immediately jump to an irrational conclusion. When faced with a simple down to earth explanation, "the aliens did it" every time - despite there being not one shred of evidence that aliens have ever visited this planet.