Next week, two festivals take place in Lincoln County in southern Nevada. The gatherings are close to Area 51, the military base where it is alleged there are clandestine government activities and where alien technology is claimed to exist. There is a belief that if enough people are gathered they will be able to force an entry to the base and uncover the supposed secrets about extra-terrestrial life.
The most famous story of an encounter with supposed extra-terrestrial life was some seventy years ago at Roswell in New Mexico. The United States Air Force reported that a weather balloon had crashed, a story that was accepted for thirty years, until the 1970s when a multitude of theories began to emerge.
Stories now abound concerning what is supposed to have happened – a spacecraft with alien life forms is said to have crashed. There has never been evidence presented to suggest that the original story about the weather was not true, but efforts to dispel speculation simply add to the conspiracy theories.
In a time of “fake news,” and a distrust of any authority or source that is associated with the “Establishment,” it has become impossible to argue with those convinced that their theories, however fanciful, have as much validity as assertions based on empirical research and rigorous evidence. To appeal to scientific or academic writers is to be accused of being in thrall to “experts.”
If research and evidence are not convincing, perhaps appeal to people’s own powers of logic can prompt thought.
If someone asserts the reality of UFOs, then they will be familiar with the reality of the space through which those craft must have travelled. If a UFO has come through space to reach Earth, then logic should tell those who believe this has happened that the technological expertise of those travelling in them is so infinitely greater than the technology possessed by those those of us here on Earth that, if the alien life forms should be inclined to communicate with us, they would already have done so, in an unambiguous way. If the putative aliens have not communicated, either they are not there, or they do not wish to talk.
To gather in Lincoln County next week seems a contradiction of the claim that they take seriously the possibility of alien life. To break into a military base by sheer force of numbers will reveal nothing other than confusion of those crossing the fences.