Are we alone in the universe?

Since G and T are made of N, C, O, H (+other elements), and are seen in the spectra of stars, that suggests if there is life on planets around those stars, it may be carbon based.

And as you implied, not only may life on planets orbiting those stars be carbon based, but also have genetic code similar to our DNA.

I don't see what Gin and Tonic have to do with any of this.

If Gin and Tonic is prevalent in the universe than that explains the Roswell UFO incident in 1947. The aliens crashed their spacecraft because they were flying under the influence of Gin and Tonic. Maybe the military clean up crew found empty beer and liquor bottles mixed in with debris at the Roswell crash site. It would take 2.5 million years to get here from the Andromeda Galaxy (going at the speed of light), so I guess you would want some pretty strong liquor to keep yourself from going insane while the UFO is on cruise control.

The Roswell incident ought to be taught in universities under the rubric "the persistence of popular delusion." From 1947 to 1949, the United States Army Air Force (later the United States Air Force) ran a top-secret project for detecting Soviet atomic tests, called Project Mogul. From the Wikipedia article:



When Mr. Brazel found debris from that balloon crash site on property far to the north of Roswell, it was the silly season in the newspapers, and some joker from the Roswell newspaper published an article claiming that Brazel had found a "flying saucer" crash site. An information officer at Roswell Army Air Force base then issued a statement saying that investigators had found a "flying disc." Why he said such a foolish thing, no one knows, and he is no longer among the living. I suspect that, knowing this to be debris from a top secret program, he panicked and said the first thing that popped into his head to distract peoples' attention. Later that day, the senior Army Air Force general in the region issued a statement that what had been found was the debris from a weather balloon, and he displayed pieces of wood and scraps of rubber and foil. Other news came along, and the incident was forgotten for 30 years.

In 1978, a physicist and "ufologist" named Stanton T. Friedman interviewed or claimed ot have interviewed a former USAAF officer who said that a "flying saucer" had been what Brazel found. The National Enquirer took the story and ran with it. There has been no turning back since then. Roswell makes good money on UFO nut tourism, so there's not only no incentive for anyone there to debunk the story, but a good deal of incentive to keep the pot boiling. This was really the dawn of the cottage industry of writing books and producing film and video to cash in on the credulity of the public when it comes to stories of this type--UFOs, ancient astronauts, alien abductions, etc. Van Daniken's book, Chariots of the Gods, published a decade earlier, was re-released and went through several printings. When it comes to selling a credulous public stories they would love to believe, there's gold in them thar hills.

Just as a side note, one does not necessarily need scientific expertise to see how phony this stuff is. I saw a television program about the "alien autopsy" video which had been produced, claiming to be an autopsy of one of the "victims" of the flying saucer crash. There was a Hollywood special effects rigger commenting, and he just laughed and laughed. Of course, no one was making videos in 1947. The first video recorder was only invented in 1951. But what struck me when i watched it was that on the wall behind the "autopsy table" there was a telephone with the handset connected by a coiled cord to the receiver, like this:



Those didn't exist in 1947. Although the armed forces used coiled cords on field telephones in the Second World War, a phone like the one above was not in general public use until the 1960s. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to spot bullsh*t when you smell it.

But this is big money for those who exploit it. Don't expect the "Roswell Incident" to go away as long as there is a buck to be made, and fools to spend their money on it.

I have no doubt that people routinely see, or think they see, objects or what they think are objects, which are flying, or which they think are flying, which they are then and subsequently unable to identify.

Maybe the citizens of Roswell have been drinking a little too much Gin and Tonic

Always a strong possibility.

In Delaware, in the late 1990's the police "found" a UFO in the swamps. It had apparently crashed in flight.

They knew it was a UFO because it had "UFO" I large print airbrushed on the side.

Its good of aliens to identify themselves in such a way. SO maybe they are just visiting us on field trips.

Oh yea, I don't believe we've been visited by aliens. There's just no reliable evidence for it. I think there is extraterrestrial life out there for the reasons given in this thread, but I doubt they've visited us. And if by some chance they have, they would be so much more advanced than us, we would never be able to detect them, so there's no point in wasting your life looking for evidence.

That must be a fun job to work at the National Inquirer and make up crazy stories for the gullible masses. The writers probably sit around laughing all day while they make up their nonsense.
"What should we write about today guys, big foot, Elvis, or Roswell? Maybe we could work all three of them into one story." What a job.

Yes, I suppose aliens coming to watch us, might be like us taking a field trip to the local zoo.

UFOologists are like gangus, they believe it because they want to believe it. They don't care about evidence.
Are you telling me the police in Delawar, honestly believed they found a UFO because it was round and had "UFO" airbrushed on the side of it. I don't think I'd feel safe at night living in Delaware knowing I had to count on the Delaware police to protect me and solve crimes.

Now think about it. There was a big newspaper article about a UFO with "UFO" on the side. The cops were more pissed at being called out by some "eyewitnesses"

I think that everybody in Delaware "got' the joke and the newspaper article as making more fun of the pranksters who were so dumb as to paint UFO on the side of this model.

I think they made this model and then, in the night, schlepped it into a swamp near Dover where the highway goes over the large coastal flats and the "UFO" could have been seen.
Apparently it was large enough to have caught drivers attention and they called the state police.

Everybody loves a good prank.

There are several good objections to the thought of "alien visitations." The first, and to my mind, most obvious, is, how do they know we're here? Radio and television signals have not been going out for very long, and they would have to be looking for them. There are several very good reasons why no one is likely to send out "manned" mission, which i won't go into here. If they don't know we're here, there's no reason at all to send a "manned" mission to this not particularly pre-possessing star in the galactic boondocks.

If they did come here, and they are supposed to be so technologically superior, why would they hide from us? If they were trying to keep their presence a secret, why mutilate livestock and trash fields of grain? Logic doesn't play a big part in the musings of the UFO crowd.

I could go on, but i'm sure you get the picture.

There is still the possibility that some form of dimensional or "space folding" type of travel (which results in faster-than-light displacement) is possible and that other alien species have it. In which case moving from place to place over great distances might not be an issue for them.

There is the same problem of how they know we're here, unless they are using the same dimensional folding technology to scan space or something.

None of which means that I think they would be more likely to travel here to mutilate cattle or anything It's just that out estimates of what is likely or possible are limited by our present understanding of physics and technology.

Yeh, and the Martians cleverly modeled their shopping center after pixelated graphics to camouflage it from us. And it worked, only Gunga sees through the deception.

That's all fine, but i'll stick with what we currently know about physics. That understanding makes it pretty obvious why the Eaties ain't here.

Unfortunately, it does indeed.

Just think, a Universe probably teeming with life, hidden on isolated islands in an ocean of physics.

That's a good way of putting it. I've thought a lot about that lately. Even if a technological civilization sends out colonists, every example would be it's own planetary Pitcairn's Island.

We have only been in the scientific age for, what, about 500 years and we already have drones. Some guy sits in a room in the Midwest, and flies a drone with a joystick, and sees everything the camera on the drone see. Maybe they would send an unmanned spacecraft. A lot of the time we tend to think of extraterrestrial technology as somewhat limited by comparing it to our own. We have only been in the scientific age for around 500 years. Imagine a civilization (that didn't wipe themselves out with atom bombs, or genetically engineered viruses) that has been doing proper science for 1,000,000 years. We couldn't even begin to fathom what they have accomplished.