why we still don't have any proof that ufos are alien spacecraft, and why no one will care

In a move sure to frustrate ufologists and conspiracy theorists, NASA says that UFOs are almost certainly not aliens.

Just in case you missed it through the rest of our regularly scheduled turmoil, UFOs and hearings about them are a thing once again. We’re just calling them unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAPs now. All the claims made about them are the same as ever, the evidence for them is just as poor and unreliable as it ever was, and all the witnesses and whistleblowers sound very passionate and authoritative but have zero credibility for their big claims. And now, NASA has weighed in, saying that while they would be happy to help us figure out what civilians and military officers are seeing in the skies, they see absolutely no indication it’s aliens.

Of course, this makes perfect sense. If aliens were here, flying around our skies, we’d be very aware of it thanks to the laws of physics and in a whole lot of trouble since we would be at the whims of a species capable of unleashing more energy than all of our nuclear warheads combined just to scoot what would have to be skyscraper-sized craft into orbit around a planet dozens, if not hundreds, of light years away from their home. We’d see energy signatures that would light up our telescopes through the icy void of space, and we’d record consistently sized mass-produced drones performing similar, coordinated maneuvers. Instead, we see bizarre, random events.

There’s a massive leap between lights in the sky someone doesn’t recognize or that look a bit weird, and extraterrestrial intelligence able to navigate the stars choosing our world for research and exploration. The burden of proof for the latter is so high that nothing less than a captured or crashed flying saucer analyzed by top experts in state of the art labs would suffice as evidence, and so far, all we have is anecdotes or strange lights at best, and outright hoaxes and fakes by people convinced that we’re a product of alien meddling and are being denied a utopia promised to us by the said alien meddlers, at worst.

In a political and social environment where the question of whether we’re alone in the universe is being settled in the court of public opinion with hearsay and videos where the soundtrack is nothing but very confused people asking each other what’s going on, NASA’s statement that there’s no proof of alien visitation will fall on plenty of deaf ears. It’s not what people want to hear, and it’s not as exciting as even just teasing the chance we’re being visited by an alien intelligence. But that’s our reality, and reality doesn’t care how much you may want something else to be true, or how exciting that alternative might be. After all, the media cares about ratings. The universe doesn’t.

Now, this doesn’t mean that there’s no such thing as aliens, or that we’re alone in this universe. Statistically, the cosmos should be full of life. A great deal of it probably has some degree of intelligence. And it’s almost certain that somewhere, there were, are, or will be creatures who also want to venture beyond their home world and are able to build spacecraft that can traverse the hostile vacuum, driven by the same inexplicable urge for novelty and exploration we are. Maybe one day they’ll find us. Or maybe we’ll stumble upon their ancient ruins. Maybe they’ll be the descendants of humans who’ll venture beyond our solar system. But for now, it’s all just speculation, not fact.