"I struggle to believe that The Pipetters are objectively real because I have a basic grasp of the size of the laboratory room, how much of it is just empty, how hard it is to travel between the bits that aren't, how inhospitable almost all of it is to bacterial life, and because everywhere we look it seems primordial and uninhabited. I don't think that is prejudice."

Don't forget, we're mind-bogglingly primitive and ignorant. We don't even know the laws of the universe yet! (ie unify GR and quantum mechanics)

Of course we haven't figured out UAP-type technology, whether what we're seeing is interstellar travel or something more exotic.

Assume there’s at least one other planet, say in the Milky Way, that evolved life at roughly the same time as Earth, except its first major species was intelligent. They would have a 300 million year head start on humanity. Whatever science and tech they developed in that time would be far beyond what we can currently even imagine. Crossing the vast distances would likely be more viable for such an advanced species.

There’s probably some statistical distribution, Normal or otherwise, governing the odds of emergence of intelligent life on any given planet capable of supporting life. Most such planets may never evolve intelligent life, or may take more than two tries for it. Earth and Humanity may even be somewhere far to the right of the mean and median. But if even just a few planets are further to the right of Earth, then you could end up with those species having hundreds of millions of years of a head start vs humanity in their evolution and development.

I’m not suggesting any of those are true, I personally have no idea. But it could be a lot of things and the sky isn’t even the limit.

All I know is that in the past few years there’s been a huge shift in what our leaders are saying and the stigma of “tin foil hat UFO nutjubs” is being lifted. The question is why? And why now?

A good primer on the topic: https://www.uap.guide/quotes/introduction

I just like to keep an open mind…

As someone with a background in both physics and psychology, I appreciate your skepticism. However, it's crucial to recognize that human knowledge and imagination are often the limiting factors in our understanding of the universe.

The Alcubierre Warp Drive, for example, is a theoretically plausible solution to surmounting intergalactic distances in normal lifetimes, although it remains practically impossible for now: https://phys.org/news/2017-01-alcubierre-warp.html. A recent paper proposes an update using solitons: https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.07125. Additionally, research on wormholes, such as Kip Thorne's work on traversable wormholes, highlights another potential avenue for interstellar travel, despite the current theoretical and practical limitations.

Throughout history, many seemingly insurmountable barriers have been overcome through the power of imagination and human innovation. For example:

1. Lord Kelvin, a prominent physicist, claimed that heavier-than-air flying machines were impossible, but the Wright brothers proved otherwise with the first successful airplane flight in 1903.

2. Ernest Rutherford, the father of nuclear physics, once declared that extracting energy from atoms was "moonshine" – yet nuclear power plants are now a reality.

3. The concept of continental drift, proposed by Alfred Wegener, was initially ridiculed, but it eventually led to the widely accepted theory of plate tectonics.

These examples demonstrate how scientific progress often hinges on the ability to challenge prevailing beliefs and imagine new possibilities. Our current understanding of the universe is based on mental models that have evolved over time and will continue to change. Newtonian physics, once considered the gold standard, was later expanded upon by the revolutionary theories of relativity and quantum mechanics, paving the way for previously "impossible" phenomena.

At the American Physical Society's Division of Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics (DAMOP) meeting, for instance, researchers discuss groundbreaking experiments and theories that would have been considered absurd just decades ago. Quantum entanglement, superposition, and teleportation, which were once mere theoretical constructs, are now supported by empirical evidence and even employed in emerging technologies like quantum computing.

In conclusion, while skepticism is a healthy part of the scientific process, it's essential not to dismiss the potential for extraterrestrial intelligence or advanced interstellar travel based solely on our current understanding of the universe. Our collective imagination and the relentless pursuit of knowledge have historically expanded the boundaries of what was once considered impossible, and there's no reason to believe this trend will cease.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yX6ETCKyPo

At some point this ex-Pentagon guy says top guys at NASA, current and former US senators, Obama and current and former US military and intelligence officials are all on record as saying UAPs are real. He says the question has now moved on to what they are, given there are recorded sighting of them going back at least to the 1940s if not far longer.

I think I remember there even being another new term to replace UAP.