How Biden's Peloton Could Be a Security Risk

Secret New Fighter Jet Uses F1-Style Engineering

MIT Gave This Math Puzzle to Applicants in 1876

How To Build a Marble-Top Coffee Table

Should We Shorten the Minute to 59 Seconds?

6 Solid Reasons for Believing in Aliens

We can't be the only ones in the vast expanse of the cosmos ... right?

By Daisy Hernandez

Dec 16, 2020

BettmannGetty Images

Are aliens real? We don't know for sure, but we want to believe. Outer space is a vast expanse that we have so much more to learn about, which is why it's hard to flat-out deny the possibility that other intelligent lifeforms exist.

If life can exist—and persist—in seclusion and in some of the harshest conditions on Earth (just look at tardigrades), it's likely that other interplanetary lifeforms have evolved and acclimated to conditions in space, too. The renowned science writer Arthur C. Clarke once said, "Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying."

Several discoveries and theories from some of the greatest minds in science point to the likelihood that there's something beyond us in the universe, so there's a pretty decent chance we have neighbors somewhere in the ether. Consider the evidence.

🛸 You love searching for the truth. So do we. Let's pursue it together.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

USS Nimitz 2004 Event

On November 14, 2004, a training mission near San Diego became one that Commander David Fravor will never forget—and remains one he still can't explain.

Fravor recalls seeing a Tic Tac-shaped object that moved much faster than the capability of any known weaponry that currently exists. "We're flying brand new Super Hornets. It was an air defense exercise—two good guys against two bad guys," Fravor said in a History channel video interview. Everything seemed normal until the USS Princeton called upon Fravor and company for a real-world task.

Changing course, it wasn't long before Fravor and the other pilots saw something strange: what appeared to be a sunken plane or submerging submarine moving erratically right under the water's surface.

"It's white, it has no wings, it has no rotors, I go 'holy, what is that?'" Fravor said. The UFO had no windows, and it's reported that infrared monitors failed to pick up on any exhaust fumes.

➡ READ THIS: The Navy's UFO Witnesses Speak Out

Fravor says it wasn't long before his curiosity got the best of him and he decided to get a closer look. As Fravor began descending toward the water, the craft surfaced, rapidly ascended, and began mirroring Fravor's flight pattern. Then, in an instant, it zipped past the nose of Fravor's jet and disappeared.

When Fravor and the other pilots got back to the Nimitz, they shared their experiences with the rest of the crew. Shortly after, another pilot took off in search of the UFO—and succeeded. This pilot managed to get a lock on the Tic Tac, which happens to be the footage seen here.

The Navy has officially released the footage (after it had originally been leaked), but says the public was never supposed to see it in the first place.

WWII Foo Fighters

In November 1944, several members of the U.S. Air Force saw what would come to be known as "Foo Fighters," a name borrowed from the "Smokey Stover" comic strip. The Foo Fighters were described as a type of mysterious aircraft that glowed red and could zip and turn through the skies with incredible ease.

The first person to spot the lights was Lt. Fred Ringwald, who happened to be a passenger in a night fighter that was flying over the Rhine Valley. The airmen reported seeing between eight and 10 of the aircraft lined up in a row. Concerned that it might be enemy aircraft, the group checked with ground radar, who hadn't registered any odd activity. One of the pilots turned his aircraft around in preparation for a fight, only to find the lights had vanished as quickly as they appeared.

The sightings didn't stop there, though. In mid-December 1944, a different pilot saw what was described as flashing red and green lights that created a T formation, which also disappeared as quickly as they came. Several more sightings ensued, and although people tried to come up with explanations for them—the airmen were suffering from "combat fatigue," the lights were a result of some kind of weird weather phenomena, they came from some new, groundbreaking Nazi technology—they still remain a mystery.

SETI Institute

The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute was founded by Carl Sagan and Jill Tarter, two astronomers who believe there's more to interplanetary life than us.

SETI's mission is "to explore, understand, and explain the origin and nature of life in the universe and the evolution of intelligence." The Institute works with NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF) as a research contractor to pool resources and explore the possibility of intelligent life on other planets.

Yep, an entire scientific organization that seeks to find other intelligent life in the universe actually exists.

UFOs Piqued the Pentagon's Interest

ClassicStockGetty Images

In 2007, the Department of Defense (DoD) created a program called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) to study "space-related phenomena that could not be easily explained, usually involving the appearance of high-speed, unidentified aircraft," per New York magazine's Intelligencer.

➡ READ THIS: Inside the Pentagon's Secret UFO Program

The covert program was headed by military intelligence official Luis Elizondo, who sought to investigate reports of UFO encounters. A decade later, Elizondo quit working at the Pentagon and confirmed AATIP's existence to the New York Times.

Oumuamua: Alien Craft or Asteroid?

MARK GARLICK/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARYGetty Images

Avi Loeb, an impressively credentialed scientist who taught at Harvard and chaired the university's Astronomy Department, has put forth an interesting, but seemingly far-fetched, hypothesis: the asteroid Oumuamua is actually space debris from an alien structure or a defunct alien space craft.

Coming from anyone else, this might seem crazy. But again, Loeb knows a thing or two about the machinations of space. While truthers are soaking the Oumuamua theory up, however, Loeb's colleagues are highly disappointed and upset that he's posited what they're calling an "insult [to] honest scientific inquiry."

A Plethora of Exoplanets

NASA recently confirmed the number of exoplanets is in the thousands, and we can expect that figure to only grow as we improve technology that's able to go into the nether regions of space.

This means there are thousands of known planets that haven't been explored at length and several more awaiting discovery that could be comprised of environments with the ability to sustain life.

Who's to say one (or multiple) exoplanets aren't already home to intelligent extraterrestrial beings?

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below