a) An alien civilization has overcome the massive problems of interstellar travel and is visiting us right now.
or
b) The people making these claims are wrong.
While a) isn't impossible, b) seems so much more likely.
Also if they have the technology to cross interstellar space, surely they have the technology not to be detected by us?
Seriously people underestimate the ludicrous energies involved in near-c travel. Even with engines off at those speeds the interstellar dust undergoing nuclear fusion off your hull will give you away
Counterpoint: biology is a machine in itself.
Our machines of metal and microchips are incredibly primitive compared to where they'll be in 100, 500, 1000, 10K+ years from now - and when a machine has the ability to to self-replicate, have autonomy, and to protect itself from microscopic threats, then it sure looks a lot like life-as-we-know it.
That's a massive difference from 0.99c travel
Humans as we know them today will never visit other galaxies, but our AI descendants almost certainly will.
Right, they could have ridden dragon-unicorn hybrids through a magic portal made from the dust of black hole centers.
That's what you mean when you say "literally everything is on the table."
Or, start drawing lines for me if you disagree.
Even at non-relativistic speeds self replicating robots could have visited every star system in the galaxy within a few tens of millions of years. We haven't seen any evidence.
Everyone has the most advanced cameras in history in their phones and there's exactly zero indisputable pictures of UFOs, ghosts, fairies, chupacabras, Nessie, Bigfoots, Yetis, and so on.
If aliens can travel even a light year, they almost certainly also have the technology to not crash.
This is key in why I was much more optimistic of finding any of those paranormal items than I was 10 years ago. I hope I'm wrong.
One theory is that these bogeys have been here as long as we have and are basically automated tests, sort-of like the monolith in 2001 A Space Odyssey. It's ridiculous, but less ridiculous than a). The more I think about it, flying octopuses from Europa is less ridiculous than a).
The whistleblower clearly is implying that we are being spied on.
You make a lot of assumptions how difficult it wouldv be to visit and even why they would be here.
based on your knowledge of known physics. We're still adding to the periodic table...
If somebody is aware of groups actively working to synthesize above 119 please let me know.
That doesn't violate known physics in any way.
Right, and for exactly that reason, it enjoys the advantage over competing theories.