Great shows out there that I catch regularly, like “UFO Hunters”, “The UFO Files”, “The Alien Files”, etc., that mix scientific theory and fact, and “apply” it to what could be alien tek.
Eg, Hitler’s obsession with saucer-shaped aircraft, our own Avrocar (more like a hovercraft than aircraft, as it was notoriously impossible to control), etc., that gave way to saucer- and crescent-shaped aircraft.
They also have Big Brains doing analysis, like Michio Kako saying, quite rightly, that the reports of hyu-mon looking aliens would be, to him, the least credible reports. Evolution is determined by environment, which is why some critters can hear infrasound and ultrasound, see into the infrared and ultraviolet (or even be colorblind… or just blind), and sea creatures can sense electric fields. So who’s to say they won’t look like Pak’ma’ra or Xenomorphs instead of Bajorans or Betazoids?
Ages ago, I was in my attic playing with my telescope, and off in the distance to the north, what to me seemed to be right over KLGA, was a perfect sphere, gray, just meandering from west to east. Perfectly level, not ascending as if someone let loose a helium balloon or anything. Way way before metallized-mylar balloons or anything, too. And it was waaaay off in the distance, with the “wavy air” effect on it, so… far.
I later found out that there were/are apparently regular releases of weather balloons that hit a certain level (buoyancy) and just go with the jet-stream over the ocean, and send weather information back. I wasn’t expecting it to be aliens or anything, and was thinking weather-balloon even though it didn’t look like the big baggy kind of balloons that’d only ball out at huge altitudes.
Wellp, it was fun while it lasted.
That said, I’d love to go on those “UFO-spotting” trips.
I just hope I don’t end up like Cartman…
