With both the existence of pure theory and applied evidence supporting the plausibility of the UFO extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) – where the UFO remains a UFO after appropriate expert analysis has failed to find a more terrestrial explanation – lets look at a few snippets of the phenomena, this time the endless stalemate between those supporting the UFO ETH, and those sceptical debunkers of the UFO ETH starting with the most basic of all arguments, UFOs can not be extraterrestrial because while there are extraterrestrials, and some have evolved a high degree of smarts, they have never produced any technology. No extraterrestrial technology; no extraterrestrial UFOs.
OBJECTION #3: Extraterrestrial intelligence exists, but they never develop any technology. No alien technology means another no-go to the UFO ETH.
ANSWER: Okay, we have lots of widely separated planetary abodes throughout the cosmos that have an intelligent species of critter on them. Since we assume your intelligent neighbours are fairly far away and you want to discover, and then maybe communicate with them, that poses a problem. If you want to find them, you or your surrogate, has got to go to them, and/or they (or their surrogate) have to come to you. In a terrestrial analogy, you have a barrier like an ocean or vast desert or mountain range separating you from them so it’s difficult to hike or swim the distance. The surrogate mentioned earlier could be a smoke or radio signal or laser beam, but if you want something more up-close-and-personal then you tend to need boats or planes or four-wheel drives or covered wagons, or in our interstellar scenario, rocket ships, etc. Once you do establish ‘first contact’, you’d like to keep in touch. On Earth, the usual means of keeping in touch other than by face-to-face communication is by snail mail, phone, or email – snail mail apart, its radio or electromagnetic communications in general that’s usually employed (even smoke signals use reflected light waves to deliver the message).
That introduces one additional complication for the UFO ETH; it’s not enough to just be intelligent. You need to have technology (and even snail mail as noted above is still a form of technology). Then, and only then, will the ‘are we alone?’ question be answered to our absolute satisfaction. We need technology if we are to find (maybe communicate with) extraterrestrial intelligence(s); and/or extraterrestrial intelligence(s) will need technology to find us. One or both of us has to have invented engineering to a somewhat sophisticated level - maybe rocket ships, maybe radio telescopes, but something technological is required.
There’s also a hidden assumption here – you actually want to seek out new civilizations. It matters not one jot if you have all the required technology but care not to use it for the purpose of answering that question – ‘are you alone in the Universe?’ I’ll assume here that if you have intelligence, and you’ve been able to construct appropriate technology, then part of your intelligence is devoted to being a curious critter who wants to know and find out things – so that’s a certainty of one. Curiosity and associated intelligence, or intelligence and associated curiosity are two sides of the same coin.
But what’s the level of certainty of developing appropriate technology in the first place? Rather poor judging from all those terrestrial species that have a somewhat reasonable degree of smarts to their credit. There’s the human species of course, and though while we’re not quite a sample of one, there having been other hominoid species with some IQ capacity (like Neanderthals), its pretty close to being a sample of one. There are documentary observations of some animals (primates mainly) not so much manufacturing, but making use of existing ‘tools’ to assist in their survival. Alas, most intelligent species lack the anatomy and/or the right environment to manipulate objects. In the case of dolphins and whales, their ocean environment stymies any way and means of constructing things and making use of fire, for example. So, developing technology has to be rated, judging from our terrestrial sampling, as rather low; otters using rocks to break open clams not withstanding.
So, for UFOs to be alien spaceships, one needs an extraterrestrial intelligent species to develop appropriate technology, and here’s where I see a bit of a bottleneck. The evolution of technology isn’t inevitable and has a lot of just-so factors attached.
Firstly, your home planet has got to come equipped with the right sorts of materials like oxygen and metallic ores and other objects (rocks, wood, etc.) than can be turned into useful tools, and of course most important a suitable supply of energy sources. That you’ll have at your disposal all the required material and energy resources is not a given.
Water worlds are out of the running since it’s difficult to discover and utilise fire in that sort of environment.
You can’t have all your required locomotive appendages (legs) in contact with the ground – some limbs have to be free to manipulate objects in your environment. Birds have wings that are off the ground, but since wings aren’t good at making tools, that seems to rule out wings, and all birds of a feather, pretty much as well as tool makers.
So, I’ve already ruled out dolphins and whales and the cephalopods (like the octopus) being water based creatures; the birds with their useless wings as far as building things is concerned; and all the four-footed walking mammals (or reptiles or amphibians).
It might be conceivable that you can build up a technology using your mouth parts and/or using a tail (if you have one) to manipulate and build things, but we don’t have obvious terrestrial case studies, although you might argue that bees, wasps, termites, ants and birds can build elaborate structures using just their mouths. So that’s in the ‘maybe’ basket.
Technology is also a double-edged sword. The use of technology has had obvious survival value for the human species. You wouldn’t be hard-pressed to come up with dozens of technological inventions that have enabled us to survive longer and thrive better and be ever more fruitful and multiply. But, our technological genie is also out of the bottle, and unless you’re a hermit, you will have noted by now that technology can also reduce our quality of life, and no doubt you wouldn’t be equally hard-pressed to cite dozens of examples, from handguns to the automobile - which leads nicely into the last consideration, longevity.
However, IMHO, the third objection fails because all extraterrestrial intelligences, past and present, would have had to have failed to develop any technology, and that’s just statistically unlikely. Alien civilizations with advanced technology might be rare, but not zero.
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