Corwin C wrote:I have a difficult time NOT believing that there is other life out there, but at the same time I'm skeptical that anyone is "visiting" us ...
Everything that you can see without magnification (except for the Andromeda Galaxy and the two Magellanic Clouds) is within our own milky way galaxy. And there is a great deal of stuff in our galaxy that we can't see. Literally billions upon billions of stars, planets, moons, comets, asteroids, black holes, quasars, pulsars, etc.
This is a portion of an image that astronomers took with the Hubble telescope, intentionally looking at a portion of the sky that (they thought) had very little in it near the big dipper. It covers an area 2.5 arc-seconds (2.5/3600 of a degree or roughly a tennis ball at 100 yards away)
Every spot on that image (except for three, if I remember my facts correctly) represents a "duplication" of everything in our galaxy. Galaxies upon galaxies and this is a tiny portion of the sky. (How many tennis balls at 100 yards away would it take to make a sphere all around you?) The experiment was repeated looking south with an even more dramatic image. (I strongly suggest a Google search of "Hubble Deep Field" and "Hubble Ultra Deep Field") Even if we are the product of chance (which I don't believe) the likelihood of us being alone are so remote and minuscule that it defies imagination.
Now, considering the time and distance that they would have to travel to visit us, even if they are in our galaxy, they would have to be so technologically advanced that we would appear like no more than ants or even germs do to us in the grand scheme of things. Why would they hide? Do you hide your presence from the ants in the backyard or the germs on your kitchen floor? I think that if they were in the neighborhood we would all know it, and there would be no doubt whatsoever.
It's all an interesting thought ... I've seen some wild things in the sky that I haven't been able to explain, but I doubt that they were of alien origin. That doesn't mean it's impossible, just unlikely. I try to keep an open mind. After all ... we could end up in some giant "ant farm" someday or even worse, under the nozzle of some galactic "Lysol."
Here is a video on the hubble ultra deep field. I posted this video awhile back.
http://youtu.be/oAVjF_7ensg
There has to be other life out there. It would be a waste of space if there wasn't.